







% ^V% # <^ ^p v > » , "°*. > V t »J 






^ "Ye 
' .0° *«> 








4 p. 



»p^ v 



^-* 







****** : -^^-* /^> ^<HI* ; J?\. 



*^v A** • a€ 





•>ti^*. "°- .*<<* >:^k'-/^ .° v ^>/^>*. "°- j 



HANDBOOK 



PSYCHOLOGY 



j. c 



CLARK MURRAY, LL.D., F.R.S.C. 

JOHN FROTHINGHAM PROFESSOR 

OF 

MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY, M'GILL COLLEGE, MONTREAL. 



FIFTH EDITION 



BOSTON 
DE WOLFE, FISKE & CO. 

361 and 365 Washington Street 



fel 









COPYKIGHT, 1897 

DbWOLFE, fiske & CO. 



All rights reserved 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



In the preface to the first edition it was explained that 
" this handbook is designed primarily to introduce stu- 
dents to the science of psychology ; and to this design 
every other purpose, which the book may serve, has been 
made subordinate. Psychology embraces a considerable 
body of systems tised facts which are beyond dispute ; 
but there are also some problems, still unsettled, which 
affect even the fundamental principles of the science. 
No fair exposition of the science is possible without in- 
dicating the expositor's standpoint in reference to these 
problems ; but it is not advisable to perplex the beginner 
with a prefatory discussion of controverted questions ; 
and to the more advanced student, who may honour the 
book with a perusal, its general standpoint ought to be 
evident without preliminary explanations." 

The original object of the book has been always kept 
in view in the present edition. Numerous alterations 
have been suggested on revision ; but these, though 
adding on the whole a few pages to the volume, are not 
individually of such importance as to require specific 
mention. 

I may observe that, had I received Professor Ladd's 
Elements of Physiological Psychology in time, I should 
have referred to it at p. 12, as the best equivalent in 
English for the great German work of Wundt. 

J. CLARK MURRAY. 

Montreal, 16th April, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Page 
§ l. Definition of Psychology, • • • • I 

§ 2. Method of Psychology, • • • • 4 

BOOK I.— GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Part I. — Elements of Mind, - - • 17 

Chapter I. — General Nature of Sensation, • 18 

§ I. The Sensible Organism, - - • 18 

§ 2. Agencies which Excite Sensibility, • • 21 

§ 3. Classification of Sensations, - • • 29 

Chapter II. — The Special Senses, • • • 33 

§ 1. Taste, ...... 33 

§ 2. Smell, - - - - • -37 

§ 3. Touch, - • • • • *4i 

§ 4. Hearing, • • • • 48 

§ 5- Sight, 56 

Chapter III.— The General Senses, • .62 

§ 1. General Sensations connected with a Single Organ, 64 

$ 2. General Sensations not limited to particular 

organs, - • • - -70 



Vlll. 



Contents. 



Part II. — The Mental I roc esses, 

Chapter I.— Association, 

§ I. Primary Lawi of Suggestion, 
§ 2. Secondary Lows of Suggestion 

Chapter II.— Comparison, . 



BOOK II.-S1ECIAL PSYCHOLOGY. 



Introduction, 
Part L— Cognitions, 

Chapter I.— Perception, 

§ I. Perceptions of Taste, 

§ 2. Perceptions of' Smell, 

§ 3. Perceptions of Touch, 

§ 4. Perceptions of Hearing, 

§ 5. Perceptions of Sight, 

§ 6. Muscular Perceptions, 

Chapter II.— Generalisation 
§ 1. Abstraction, 
§ 2. Generalisation Proper, 
§ 3. Denomination, - 

Chapter III.— Reasoning, 
§ 1. Conception, 
§ 2. Judgment, 
§ 3. Reasoning Proper, 



Contents. ix. 



Chapter IV. —Idealisation, 
§ I. The Speculative Ideal; 
§ 2. The ^Esthetic Ideal, 
§ 3. The Ethical Ideal, 
§ 4. The Religious Ideal, 



Chapter V. — Illusory Cognitions, 
§ 1, Illusions in General, • 
§ 2. Dreaming, 
§ 3. Hypnotic States, 



Chapter VI.— General Nature of Knowledge, 
§ 1. Self -consciousness, 
§ 2. Time, .... 
§ 3. Space, - 
§ 4. Substance, - 
§ 5. Cause, - 

Part II.— Feelings, • 

Introduction, - 

§ I. The nature of pleasure and pain, 
§ 2. The expression of the feelings, 
§ 3. Classification of the feelings, - 

Chapter I. — Feelings of Sense, 

Chapter II. — Feelings originating in Association 
% 1. Feelings for external nature, - 



226 
228 
229 
241 
244 

247 
247 
256 
266 

282 
287 
295 
299 
304 
309 

312 

312 

313 

333 
337 

339 

359 
361 



x. Contents. 

f 2. Feelings for self, • • 3^6 
§ 3. Feelings for others, • • • "37° 

Chapter III.— Feelings originating in Compari- 
son, .--••- 3^9 

Chapter IV.— Intellectual Feelings, - - 397 

Chapter V.— Feelings of Action, • - • 402 

Tart III.— Volitions, - • • • - ¥>S 

Chapter I.— The General Nature of Volition, • 406 

Chapter II.— The Motive Tower of the Fkelings, 410 

Chapter III.— Extension of Voluntary Control 

over Muscles, Feelings, and Thoughts, 419 

Chapter IV.— Fkhedom of Volition, • • 4^ 

Chapter V. — Conclusion' . . - 43 1 



PSYCHOLOGY. 



INTRODUCTION. 

§ I. — Definition of Psychology, 

PSYCHOLOGY* is the name now generally applied 
to the science which investigates the phenomena 
of the mind. Mind f is also denoted by the words soul 
and spirit^ while in mouein limes it has become common 
to use, as equivalent to these, certain expressions con- 
nected with the first personal pronoun, thrown into the 
form of substantives — the I, the me, the ego, the self. 
Another modern fashion in psychological language is to 
describe the mind by the term subject. The external 
world, when contrasted with mind or soul or spirit, is 
spoken of as matter or body ; it is opposed to the terms 



* This name, though derived from ancient Greek, is of compara- 
tively modern origin. It was used for the first time apparently 
during the sixteenth century, perhaps among the Ramists ; at 
least, Freigius is the earliest author, in whose writings it has been 
discovered. See Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. i., pp. 
135-6. 

r On the history of the word mind a learned philological article 
by Mr. Earle will be found in Mind for July, 1881. 

A 



2 Psychology. 

expressive of the first person as the ncnego or notself % 
while the counterpart of subject is object In recent 
times mental phenomena are frequently distinguished 
from physical by the term psychical, — a term of some 
advantage from its being cognate with the name of the 
science. 

The phenomena of the self or mind are distinguished 
from those of matter by a very marked characteristic. 
Any material thing whether organic or inorganic, 
whether at rest or in motion or undergoing any internal 
change, is wholly unaware of its own condition. It is not 
so with me. 1 may be ignorant oi innumerable actions 
and processes going on in my own body and in other 
bodies; but of what I myself do or suffer I must be 
cognisant, else it could not be said to be done or suffered 
by me. If I feel a pleasure or a pain, I must know that 
I feel it; and to deny my knowledge of the feeling would 
be to deny its existence. In like manner, when I see or 
hear, remember or imagine, believe or disbelieve, love 
or hate, I must know that I do so. Now, this knowledge 
of what is passing within me is called consciousness ; and 
it forms the distinctive attribute of the mind or self. 

To avoid misapprehensions, it may be observed that 
we often speak of doing an action unconsciously. This 
seems to contradict the assertion that consciousness 
characterises all the actions we perform. But the truth 
is, that, when we use this expression, we mean that such 
an action is in reality done, not by oiirselves, but by those 
notselves, — those material things which we call our 
muscles, nerves, and brains. When a muscle twitches, 
or a nerve or brain-fibre thrills, without the movement 
being willed or intended by me, it is not I that produce 
the movement. It will be shown, in fact, that nervous 
and muscular actions often simulate strikingly the 



Introduction. 3 

appearance of being originated and controlled intelligently 
by me, when, in reality, they are immediately due to 
habits of body formed long before by myself, or perhaps 
by my ancestors, or by the general constitution of nature. 
But an action, of which we are wholly unconscious, is 
one with which we have truly nothing to do, and that is 
the reason why we often exculpate ourselves by pleading 
that we acted unconsciously, inasmuch as the action 
could not then really have proceeded from us. 

It follows from this, that, in speaking of the mind, we 
must avoid supposing it to be the brain or the heart or 
any other portion of the material thing we call our body. 
We sometimes, indeed, by a figure of speech, use brain 
and heart to mean mind or soul ; and the figure is 
allowable, so far as the inexact requirements of ordinary 
language are concerned. But, in scientific accuracy, 
" I " am not a brain, or heart, or system of nerves, or 
any part or the whole of a body. 

It appears, then, that the distinctive characteristic 'of 
mind is, to be conscious of its phenomena ; and, 
consequently, these phenomena are often described as 
phenomena of consciousness. Like the phenomena 
of external nature, those of our internal consciousness 
will commonly be found to be composite, and therefore 
to require analysis. In order to such an analysis, it is 
necessary to know the elementary materials which enter 
into the composition of the phenomena analysed ; and 
accordingly the description of these materials will form 
the subject of the First Book of this work, which, as 
applying to all the phenomena of mind in general, may 
be appropriately styled General Psychology. The 
Second Book, to be distinguished as Special Psychology, 
will investigate the various combinations which form the 
special phases of our mental life. 



4 Psychology. 

Before proceeding to these subjects, some further 
introductory remarks may be found of service in 
reference to the method which should be adopted in the 
study of our science. 



§ a. — Method of Psychology. 

The method of Psychology is determined by the 
nature of the phenomena which it investigates. The 
nature of these phenomena, as we have seen, is that 
they are always accompanied by consciousness on the 
part of their subject. It is consequently by means of 
this accompanying consciousness, directed by proper 
precautions, that we must investigate the mind. The 
proper precautions, indeed, must not be neglected in 
Studying the phenomena of mind any more than in 
observing the phenomena of the material world ; for it 
cannot be su pposed that the ordinary consciousness of 
men will give them a scientific knowledge of what is pas- 
sing in their minds more readily than their ordinary 
perceptions reveal the physical facts disclosed to the 
scientific observer. The precautions which the psycho- 
logist must adopt in order to direct and correct his 
observations, are not essentially different from those 
which must be taken by other scientific observers; they 
are rendered only more necessary inasmuch as nearly all 
the difficulties in the way of accurate observation are 
greatly enhanced by the peculiar character, especially by 
the extreme evanescence and complexity, of mental 
phenomena. 

One of the most valuable safeguards against mistakes in 
observation is found by varying the circumstances in 
which phenomena are observed. Now this safeguard is 



Introduction. 5 

readily supplied to the psychological observer by refusing 
to satisfy himself with the mere introspection of his indi- 
vidual mind, and endeavouring to watch the mental 
operations of others, as far as these are expressed in their 
language and external conduct. The study of psycho- 
logy, by reflection on one's own conscious life, is some- 
times spoken of as the Introspective or Subjective 
Method, by observations on the minds of others, as the 
Objective Method. Though some schools reject or un- 
duly depreciate the former, it is evident that both methods 
must be combined ; for objective observations can be in- 
terpreted only by reference to the facts of our own 
consciousness.* In such observations it is important to 
seek the assistance of those studies which have for their 
object to inquire into the phenomena of human life that 
reflect the mental condition of men under every variety 
of external circumstances. The facts which reflect the 
mental life of man may do so either as being its product, 
or in so far as it is theirs. These it may be convenient to 
consider apart. 

I. Of the phenomena which result from the action of 
the human mind, most have been already reduced to 
orderly study in separate sciences. 

1. The main instrument which man employs for the 
expression of his conscious states is language, and there- 



* Objective observations may sometimes usefully be extended to 
the mental life of the lower animals, which may occasionally throw 
light on the lower activities, at least, of the human mind ; but the 
interpretation of the actions of animals, as implying facts similar to 
those of our consciousness, cannot be accompanied with too great 
caution. For the student who wishes to follow out this line of in- 
quiry, probably the most serviceable aids are the two works by Dr. 
G. J. Romanes on Animal Intelligenct and Mental Evolution i 
Animal*. 



6 Psychology. 

fore the Science of Language will be found of continual 
service to the psychologist ; for whether in the wide re- 
searches of comparative philology, or in the etymology of 
isolated words, the speech of men often reveals the 
history of ideas and feelings and mental habitudes, which 
could not otherwise be traced with so sure a step. 

2. The origin of language is hidden in the trackless 
distance of a prehistoric past ; so also is the origin of 
society and of the system of life which society entails. 
But the actual condition of society, both in our own day 
and throughout historical periods, is within our reach ; 
and there are few more fascinating branches of study than 
that which investigates the picturesque varieties of moral 
standard, of social custom, of political institutions, by 
which human life is diversified under different climates 
and at different stages of civilisation. The accumulation 
of evidence on these subjects, especially in recent times, 
throws occasionally a welcome light, if not on the origin, 
at least on the development of many feelings and ideas 
and convictions, which play an important part in the 
human consciousness. The collection and preservation 
of accurate statistics with regard to the existing pheno- 
mena and the current changes of society, are becoming a 
serious work among all civilized nations ; and the facts 
thus obtained may often be consulted for evidence of the 
operation of great mental laws. 

3. The studies, which have just been indicated, belong 
to what older writers, with some propriety, were wont to 
describe as the Natural History of Man. But the civil 
or political history of man, — what we understand by 
history simply, including, of course, biography, which is 
but the history of individuals — is not without its value to 
the psychologist, as revealing the mental influences by 
which human life receives its determinate character in any 



Introduction. 7 

particular country at any particular time, as well as its 
development from age to age. In fact, the Philosophy of 
History must seek to bring the periods in the evolution 
of a nation, or in the vaster evolution of the human race, 
into harmony with the universal laws of the human mind. 

4. But the phenomena, which most directly reflect the 
mental life of man, are the product of his mind in science 
and art. Science is evidently the systematic effort of 
human intelligence to unfold the intelligible order that 
exists throughout every realm of the universe ; and the 
evolution of scientific ideas must be an exponent of the 
laws which govern the evolution of man's general intelli- 
gence. In science the cool intellect alone is called into 
play ; in art the intellectual life is warmed with feeling. 
The fine arts, therefore, represent a double aspect of 
man's mental nature, — his power of knowing and his 
power of feeling. Accordingly the critical study of the 
fine arts, — of sculpture and painting, of music and litera- 
ture, — will be found extremely serviceable in assisting to 
unravel some of the most complicated operations of the 
mind. 

II. But the mind is not only a producer, it is also a 
product. It is true that the function of the mind is, by 
becoming conscious of the forces of nature, to free man 
from subjection to their unqualified sway. Still whatever 
freedom from the mere force of nature the mind may 
reach, there is another aspect in which it remains a natural 
product ; and in this aspect it receives an explanation in 
the agency of those natural forces by which it is modified. 

1. Here the vast cosmic forces of the solar system 
may be practically left out of account, as their influence 
on the human mind is of an extremely remote and 
indirect character. The changes of summer and winter, 
of day and night, of morning and evening, as well as the 



8 Psychology. 

varying phases of the moon, do exercise an appreciable 
influence over the thoughts and feelings of men. But 
the influence of these agencies in human life is not the 
irresistible domination of a natural force, such as they 
exert over vegetation, or over the life of migratory or 
hibernating animals; it is an influence which, in normal 
health, is completely under the control of intelligent 
volition, and grows tyrannical only when by disease life 
becomes helplessly subject to external nature.* It is true 
that the grandeur and mystery of the great cosmic move- 
ments have, in earlier times, exercised such a fascination 
over the human mind as to gain the credit of a direct 
influence on human life, the systematic interpretation of 
which formed the exploded science of astrology. But 
the general advance of human thought to the modern 
scientific point of view, is strikingly indicated when we 
contrast an antique astrological calculation on the effect 
of a man's "star" with the causal connection which 
recent observations have endeavoured to establish 
between the sun's spots and the social disasters which 
follow a famine. 

2. Only less remote than the influences just described 
are those which have their origin in terrestrial nature, — 
the influences of a geographical, climatic, and meteoro- 
logical character. Climate and geographical features 
have an undoubted power to mould the thoughts and 
feelings of men; but their effects in the history of the 
human mind have often been exaggerated by forgetting 
ar underestimating the energy of intelligence in asserting 



• The belief at least in the tyranny of the moon over the diseased 
mind is preserved in the Latin lunaticus, the Greek <re\r)viaic6s, our 
English moonstruck, as well as the older expressions, tnoonish and 
moonling. 



Introduction. g 

itself over the force of its environment. Soil and climate 
and weather determine absolutely the life of animal and 
plant j but man succumbs to their influence only in 
proportion as disease reduces him to the condition of a 
mere animal organism, and thereby renders impossible 
the independent play of intelligence. 

3. But in what is appropriately called human nature 
we come upon a region of the natural forces, which 
necessarily have a very direct influence in modifying the 
mental life of man. Among the powers of human na- 
ture some may be distinguished as universal from others 
which are particular, 

i. By the former are meant of course those powers 
which are common to the whole of mankind. Now, 
some of these are extrinsic to the individual. 

(a) The modifying influences here characterised as ex- 
trinsic to the individual are the race to which he belongs, 
and those general tendencies of his time which are some- 
times spoken of as the Zeitgeist or spirit of the age. Amid 
the innumerable varieties by which human beings are 
distinguished, there are certain prevailing types, along 
which these varieties are ranged ; and such predominant 
types of variation may be traced in the mental as well as 
in the bodily characteristics. A type of this kind may 
often be referred to the common origin of the individuals 
in whom it predominates, and it then constitutes what 
we understand by a difference of race. It would be out 
of place, at this introductory stage, to discuss the explan- 
ation of race differences which may seem to be demanded 
by the present state of the science of man. It is suffi- 
cient to recognise the fact of the power which such 
differences are calculated to exert in shaping the charac- 
ter of a man's mind. But the influence of race is apt to 
be traversed by the influence of those mental tendencies 



10 Psychology. 

that are characteristic of the period in which a man's life 
is passed. And it must not be forgotten that both in- 
fluences are qualified by the principle already noticed, 
that the mind, being essentially intelligent of the forces 
of nature, may rise above their unconditional sway, and 
direct their operation. 

(o) But this qualification is of less value when we 
come to those influences of human nature which are in- 
trinsic to the individual. These are two : one being of a 
permanent character — sex ; another, of a mutable char- 
acter — age. Even these agencies, however, are not ab- 
solutely irresistible in their effects. The freedom of the 
mind from the tyrannous sway of sex is seen in the 
manly courage which emergencies have sometimes called 
forth in women, and in the womanly tenderness often 
displayed by stern men. Such freedom may occasionally 
reach an extreme of excess ; a person may become " un- 
sexed," though this cannot happen without a violation of 
human nature. Effeminacy in man, or masculine bold- 
ness in woman, are both unnatural monstrosities. In 
like manner the natural tendencies of age are also some- 
times counteracted ; youth occasionally displays a scber 
thoughtfulness more characteristic of advanced life, while 
a happy juvenility of spirit is not infrequently carried 
down into a hale old age. 

ii. But, besides the universal influences of race and 
sex and age, the human mind is subject to other influences 
that are particular, as they form the distinctive peculiarities 
of individuals. 

(a) Sometimes these peculiarities are acquired in the 
course of the individual's life, and then they constitute 
his habits or character. Habit has been well named a 
second nature, for it acts in the same way as any 
tendency in the original nature of man. As habit is 



Introduction. 1 1 

acquired, so it can also be overcome, or supplanted by an 
opposite tendency. In fact, all hope of intellectual and 
moral improvement rests on the power of reforming 
habits. 

(b) But there is a less variable sphere of human nature 
— that of the tendencies which are born in the individual. 
These form what we express by the French naturel in the 
largest sense of the term, comprehending all that is 
commonly understood by genius in the intellectual sphere, 
and in the emotional by temperament or disposition. 

The contact of man with the general system of forces 
in his own, as well as in external nature, depends on the 
fact that, in one aspect, he is an animal organism. The 
part of this organism, by which his conscious relations 
with nature are governed, is the system of nerves dis- 
tributed throughout his body and centred in his brain. 
Accordingly, among the auxiliary studies, to which the 
psychologist resorts, the highest value must be attached 
to human anatomy and physiology, in so far as these ex- 
plain the structure and functions of the different parts of 
the nervous system. It must not, indeed, be supposed, 
as has been too hastily assumed by some, that the physi- 
ology of the nervous system can enable us to dispense 
with that direct observation of consciousness, which 
is the special province of psychology. For even 
if the system of nerves in the human body were 
known much more perfectly than at present, 
no observation of it could ever reveal anything 
but material structures and processes ; no such observa- 
tion could ever reveal the thoughts and feelings and 
volitions which make up our conscious life, or the laws 
by which these are governed. Still, it would be very 
unfortunate for the psychologist, were he unduly to 
depreciate the assistance which he may receive from the 



12 Psychology 

physiologist. It may now be accepted as a fact, that 
with every phenomenon of consciousness a correspond- 
ing phenomenon is set up in the nervous system ; and it 
will often be found that a knowledge of the nervous 
action is the most trustworthy guide to a psychological 
explanation of the phenomenon in consciousness, or the 
most efficient safeguard against mistakes about its nature. 
The student of psychology will, therefore, be materially 
assisted by seeking at least such acquaintance with 
physiology as may be obtained from Professor Huxley's 
Lessons in Elementary Physiology, or from works which 
treat especially of the physiology of the nervous system 
in its bearing on psychology, like Dr. Carpenter's 
Principles of Mental Physiology or the more elaborate 
Grundziige der Physiologischen Psychologie of Wundt. 
For the treatment of psychological questions in their 
connection with the evolutionism of the present day, the 
student should consult Spencer's Principles of Psychology \ 
which will be found of great value in other aspects as 
well. 

Most of the other studies, which have been referred to 
in this section as tributary to psychology, are compre- 
hended under anthropology in the widest conception of 
its range. The student, who is not familiar with the 
researches of this science, will find an interesting account 
of their drift, and an admirable preparation for more 
detailed study, in the Introduction to Anthropology, by 
Dr. E. B. Tylor. 



BOOK I 



GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY, 



AN analysis of the phenomena of consciousness 
discovers the fact, that they are composed of cer- 
tain simple factors, which may be regarded as the ele- 
ments of our mental life, and that the combination of 
these elements is due to certain simple processes. 
Accordingly this Book divides itself naturally into two 
Parts, devoted respectively to the elements and the 
processes of mental life* 



Tlu Elements of Mind. \? 



PART I. 



THE ELEMENTS OF MIND. 

ELEMENTS are phenomena which are incapable 
of being decomposed ; and therefore the ele- 
ments of mental life are those simple facts, beyond 
which science, in its last analysis of consciousness, 
has been unable to go. Such elementary , facts 
form merely what may be called the raw materials of 
mind ; they are wrought into actual mental states 
only as they are combined by the processes which 
will be afterwards explained. These raw materials of 
mind are connected by natural law with the great system 
of natural phenomena ; and the drift of the present in- 
vestigation must be to trace that connection. In doing 
so we shall describe first the general nature of the mental 
elements, and then their specific forms. 



1 8 Psychology. 



CHAPTER L 



THE GENERAL NATURE OF SENSATION. 

THE natural elements, of which conscious life 
is formed, are the phenomena called sensti 
lions* A sensation is any consciousness arising from 
an action in the bodily organism. The organism, 
considered as endowed with the capacity of exciting 
consciousness, is said to be sensitive or sensible. The 
general capacity is spoken of as sensibility, and the 
particular forms of the sensibility are called senses. 
As sensation depends on the action of the bodily 
organism, it may be well, before examining the nature 
of sensation itself, to consider the structure of the 
organism, and the agencies by which its sensibility is 
excited. 

§ i. — The Sensible Organism. 

All bodies act and react on each other. Even the 
mineral is subject, not only to the mechanical impulse of 
bodies impinging on it, but occasionally also to chemical 

* On the various meanings of the term sensation see Hamilton's 
edition of Reid's Works, p. 877, note. A history of theories in 
regard to sensation will be found in the same work, Note D, § 1. 



The General Nature of Sensation. 19 

alteration from bodies in affinity with it, and to thermal 
and electrical changes as well. The vegetable, and even 
the most rudimentary form of animal, exhibit the influence 
of foreign bodies by taking from them the constituents 
necessary for existence or growth, and restoring them 
after a period to the environment. But the higher 
animal organisms, and that of man especially, possess 
the power of responding in an innumerable variety of 
ways to surrounding agencies, and this responsive power 
is due mainly to the elaborate differentiation of the 
bodily organs in general, and more particularly of the 
nervous system. 

It is sometimes said that the brain is the organ of 
mind. It would be more correct to say that the mind 
finds an organ, that is, an instrument, in the entire 
animal organism \ and this seems to be the explanation 
of the ancient doctrine, which, instead of restricting the 
soul to one part of the body, finds it " all in the whole, and 
all in every part." For the whole organism is, in every 
part, adapted to furnish materials for the building up of 
man's mental structure ; but it owes this adaptation to 
the elaborate system of nerves, with which every part is 
more or less completely supplied. The nervous system 
of man is two-fold : it consists of two systems, which are 
distinguished as the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic. 
The latter, by its distribution among the viscera, seems 
to be connected with the functions of organic life, rather 
than with those of the mind, though some hold it to be 
the special organ of the emotional nature. 

The cerebro-spinal system, which certainly shows a 
vastly more intimate and complicated connection with 
mind, is divisible into two parts, — a central and a 
peripheral. The central portion is found in the brain 
and spinal cord. It is distinguishable to the eye by it? 



20 Psychology. 

greyish colour, and appears under the microscope to be 
formed by masses of minute vesicles or cells. The other 
portion, which connects the centres with the extremities, 
as well as the different centres with each other, is white 
in colour. It consists of strands of fibres, distributing 
themselves in ever minuter ramifications to every part of 
the organism. Among these fibres two groups may be 
distinguished as possessing distinct functions. One 
group, which issue from each side of the front of the 
spine, carry impulses from the centre outwards, and 
thereby stimulate muscular movement ; the other group, 
which issue from the back of the spine, transmit impulses 
inwards, and excite sensation. The nerves of sensation 
are, therefore, called afferent or centripetal ; those of 
motion, effcre?it or centrifugal. The body is thus seen 
to be the organ of the soul, not merely as the passive 
recipient of sensations excited by the action of external 
bodies, but as a source of energy by which it reacts on 
these and produces modifications in them. 

The afferent nerves, which are thus distributed over 
the body, are perpetually carrying to the spinal cord 
and brain the impressions which have been excited in the 
various organs ; and these organs become thus the 
channels of different sensations. It is a moot point 
among physiologists, whether the specific differences 
of sensation are due to different nerves being endowed 
with different specific properties, or whether all nerves 
are identical in property, and become differentiated to 
different functions merely in consequence of the different 
uses to which they are put. This question, however, is 
of no essential moment to the psychologist ; for him it is 
sufficient, that specifically different sensations are 
awakened by the various alterations to which the different 
organs of the body are subject. But of course it is 



The General Nature of Sensation. 21 

implied that a bodily organ can form the channel of sensa- 
tion, only in so far as it is supplied with sentient nerve* 
fibres, and these arc- in uninterrupted connection with the 
brain. All the organs of the body are thus more or less 
sensitive ; but in respect of their sensibility a marked 
distinction may be drawn between two classes. For one 
set of organs are evidently by their very structure adapted 
mainly to the special function of producing sensation, 
and these are accordingly said to be the organs of the 
special senses ; while the other organs of the body give 
rise to sensation only incidentally, in performing the 
various functions of animal life, to which they are respec- 
tively adapted. But this is a distinction which can be 
conveniently explained only under the third section of 
this chapter, in the description of the various sensations 
we receive through the different organs. 

§ 2. — Agencies which excite Sensibility. 

The bodily organism, especially in consequence of its 
developed nervous system, is, as we have seen, responsive 
to the action of the various forces of nature ; and these 
forces may accordingly be spoken of in general as the 
agencies which excite sensation. Now, the action of 
these forces is conceived as some form of motion, 
whether it be the motion of masses of matter, or motion 
among the particles of which masses are composed. 
Consequently, the immediate stimulus of sensation may, 
in every case, be represented as some kind of movement. 
The movement may originate in the organism itself; for 
all the higher organisms are preserved and developed 
only by innumerable processes, which are apt to produce 
alterations of nervous tissue that may excite sensibility. 
In other cases, and these are more numerous, the move- 



22 Psychology. 

ment originates in extraorganic bodies ; but it must always 
be translated into a nervous process before it can produce 
sensation. 

Sensations are of innumerably various kinds ; they vary 
in accordance with the variation of the natural move- 
ments by which they are produced, and the part of the 
organism affected. There is, however, one difference 
among sensations, which traverses all others, and may 
therefore be noticed first. This is the intensity, that is, 
the degree in which a sensation absorbs consciousness. 
This property has a natural correspondence with the 
breadth or amplitude of the movement by which the 
sensation is produced, and by the breadth or amplitude 
of a movement is meant the space through which the 
moving body travels from the point of rest or equilib- 
rium. It is true, as will be shown more fully in the 
sequel, the degree, in which a sensation absorbs con- 
sciousness, depends also on the voluntary strain of atten- 
tion, however that is to be explained; but still the natural 
tendency of any movement, which comes into contact 
with our organism, is to obtrude itself into consciousness 
with increasing force in proportion to every increase in 
its breadth. Now, as every movement may vary in 
breadth, every kind of sensation is liable to varying de- 
grees of intensity. 

Besides the general difference of intensity, sensations 
are distinguished by specific difference— differences of 
quality or kind. These may be conceived as due to the 
form of movement, and the form of a movement is itself 
due mainly to its length or velocity. There are, first, the 
long slow movements of material masses, which mani- 
fest themselves in the form of mechanical pressure, 
either by sensations of touch, or by sensations of resis- 
tance to muscular effort, or by felt pulsations upon the 



The General Nature of Sensation. 23 

skin, or throughout the nervous tissue. When move- 
ments become shorter and more rapid, reaching a velocity 
of between twenty and thirty in a second, they begin to 
affect an organ — the ear — specially differentiated to 
receive the impact of such vibrations, and then excite in 
consciousness the sensations of sound. The most rapid 
vibrations audible do not exceed 38,000 in a second, and 
even these are far beyond the limit of agreeableness. We 
must, therefore, pass over a vast interval before we reach 
the movements which manifest themselves in conscious- 
ness as sensations of heat. These movements lie at the 
lowest verge of luminous vibrations, the slowest of which, 
represented by the red rays of the spectrum, rise to the 
number of 451 billions in a second. But beyond the 
highest verge of light, — the violet rays, whose vibrations 
amount to 785 billions in a second, — there lie the atomic 
movements, which appear in the chemical or actinic 
action of light. Somewhere in this series lie the move- 
ments of electricity, the action of which on the nervous 
system produces the well-known electrical sensations of 
a sudden shock or a continuous thrill. 

The phenomena of sensation are thus brought into 
relation with the general forces of the physical world ; 
and the question will naturally occur, whether the rela- 
tion is that uniform ratio, by which the physical forces 
themselves are held in a system of unalterable correspon- 
dences, — a system which is being gradually unfolded in 
the admirable investigations of modern science on the 
correlation and convertibility of the physical forces. If 
the correspondence of sensation to the physical forces is 
of the same kind, then both must admit of quantitative 
commensuration. That would imply that we are able (1) 
to measure the quantity of a given sensation, and (2) to 
form an equation between that quantity and a given 



24 Psych hsy. 

quantity of the physical force by which it is stimulated. 
The fact that the same sensation admits of more or less 
intensity, seems to furnish an obvious basis for quanti- 
tative measurements ; and on this basis a new line of in- 
vestigation has been opened up in recent times under 
the name of Psychophysks. It is contended that a 
psychophysical law has been established, expressing a 
measurable correspondence between the intensity of 
sensations and the quan;ity of physical force which forms 
their sensible stimulus. 

To explain, it must be observed that the law is 
admitted to hold only vithin certain limits. The sensi- 
bility has a double limit, — one on the side of increase, 
another on the side of decrease. 

1. On the latter it is evident there must be a point, 
below which a stimulus would be insufficient to excite the 
sensibility at all. 

II. But on the other side also it is found that a given 
increase of stimulus is not always followed by a 
corresponding increase of intensity in the sensation 
produced. The effects of excessive increase are different. 

i. Very often an extremely powerful or extremely 
prolonged stimulus may deaden the sensibility altogether. 
The ear is deafened by a very loud noise, the eye is 
blinded by excess of light. The skin also becomes 
insensible to a continued contact, like that of the clothing. 

2. But in other cases the sensibility, instead of being 
deadened, is altered by an additional force of stimulus. 
The specific sensation, usually produced by an external 
agent, may disappear when the agent becomes unusually 
powerful, and be replaced by a general sensation of an 
unpleasant character. Thus, the sense of temperature 
gives way to an indefinite feeling of pain under excessive 
heat or excessive cold. At times, however, a specific 



The General Nature of Sensation. 25 

sensation of a new character is excited, that is to say, 
under certain conditions an increase of physical force 
produces, not an increased quantity, but a different 
quality, of sensation, — not the old sensation with a new 
intensity, but a new sensation altogether. Thus, the 
sensation of cold is not merely a lower degree of heat, 
though the stimuli of the two may be said to vary merely 
in force. So a diminution of light will make a white 
gray, and a blue black. 

The sphere of the psychophysical law, then, is 
restricted by those limits within which the specific 
sensibility is not destroyed or altered. But within these 
limits the law claims to express the exact difference of 
sensation. The difference is not indeed the same for all 
sensations. It is said to be in the proportion 3:4 for 
hearing and touch, 15:16 for touch assisted by the 
muscular sense, and 100:101 for sight. But it is held 
that there is a constant difference for all the senses, and 
that this is expressed in the following law : — To make 
sensations differ in i?itensity in the ratio of an arithmetical 
series, their stimuli must differ in the ratio of a geometrical 
series. 

Now, before discussing whether this law is verified by 
experience, it is worth while inquiring whether the relation 
between physical and psychical phenomena is such as to 
allow the establishment of any psychophysical law what- 
ever. To determine this, it is necessary to consider the 
nature of the transition from physical stimulus to sensa- 
tion. In this transition there are two stages which it is 
important to distinguish. 1. The physical movement 
must be translated into a nervous action; and though this 
may be conceived as a mode of motion, yet in the present 
state of physiology the precise nature of the motion is 
unknown, certainly cannot be differentiated in correspon- 



26 Psychology. 

dence with the differences of physical stimulus on the 
one hand or of sensation on the other. 2. The physical 
and nervous movements must be translated into sensa- 
tion, into consciousness. Here is the point where the 
difficulties of psychophysics become insurmountable. 

I. By the acknowledgement of all thinkers the transition 
from movement to consciousness is over a chasm which 
cannot be bridged by the ordinary ideas of science ; and 
therefore there can be no strictly scientific explanation of 
the transition. The scientific incomprehensibility here is 
twofold. 

1. There is a general incomprehensibility in the transi- 
tion from movement to consciousness. This is not like 
the translation of one mode of motion into another. The 
one fact which renders possible the commensuration of 
the various physical forces, is the circumstance that they 
are all capable of being described in terms of motion. 
Even phenomena, like light or chemical action, which 
cannot by direct observation be proved to be modes of 
motion, may yet be hypothetically interpreted as such ; 
and in fact they receive thereby such a fruitful scientific 
elucidation, as seems to afford an establishment of the 
hypothesis. But no similar hypothesis is conceivable in 
reference to the sensations of our conscious life ; and 
consequently there is here an absolute break in the 
continuity of scientific interpretation, by which alone 
sensations could be brought into commensurable relation 
with the physical forces of the universe. 

2. There is also a special incomprehensibility in the 
transition from any particular kind of motion to any 
particular kind of sensation. We cannot explain why 
air-waves appear in consciousness as sound, ether-waves 
as light, chemical movements as taste or smell. We 
cannot even discover any reason for the ratio between 



The General Nature of Sensation. 2J 

changes in the velocity of movement and concurrent 
changes in sensation. There is indeed a certain uniform 
progress in tones correspondent with the varying velocity 
of the atmospheric vibrations on which they depend. 
Still the difference between a higher and a lower note 
cannot be intelligibly represented as having any similarity 
to the difference between a larger and a smaller number. 
In like manner an increase in the rapidity of ethereal 
vibrations exhibits no resemblance to the progress from 
the red to the violet side of the rainbow. 

II. Another obstacle to the establishment of a psycho- 
physical law is met with in the impossibility of finding 
one of the terms in the equation which the law supposes. 
As sensation requires both a physical stimulus and a 
sensitive organism, its intensity depends not only on ob- 
jective, but also on subjective, conditions. 

i. Now this implies, in the first place, that the inten- 
sity of the nervous action excited by the physical move- 
ment depends, not only on the force of that movement, 
but also on the state of the organic sensibility at the time. 
If the general organism is exhausted, as by an ordinary 
day's work, or by any extraordinary exertion, or if the 
particular organ affected is occupied by some other 
stimulus at the moment, the resulting sensation may be 
greatly enfeebled, while it is susceptible of violent inten- 
sity, not so much from the normal vigour of the organism, 
as from abnormal irritations due either to emotional ex- 
citement or to inflammatory disease. 

2. But leaving these organic conditions of intensity out 
of account, there are mental conditions which oppose an 
insuperable barrier in the way of any such quantitative 
measurements as that under consideration. These men- 
tal conditions are summed up in the fact that we are 
intelligent beings. The primary datum for forming an 



28 Psychology. 

equation between our sensations and their physical 
stimuli is, as we have seen, a determinate intensity of 
sensation. But we have no means of discovering what 
is the real intensity of any man's sensations ; we can ob- 
tain merely the judgment which he has formed of their 
intensity. Now there is no reason to suppose that men's 
judgments are not in this matter, as they are well known 
to be in others, deflected from the truth by many a bias.* 
Another quantitative calculation has endeavoured to 
find the interval of time that elapses between the occur- 
rence of a physical stimulus and a resulting sensation. 
Here, again, it must be born in mind that organic con- 
ditions are called into play. The physical stimulus must 
be converted into a movement in nervous tissue, and 
transmitted along nerve-fibre. The rate at which nerve- 
force is propagated along nerve-fibre must evidently be 
modified by causes similar to those which interfere with 
intensity. It would appear, therefore, that any rate of 
velocity, which may be assigned to nerve-force, can be 
at best but an average gathered from a numberless 
variety of rates. But this question belongs to the physio- 
logy of the nervous system, rather than to psychology. 
If we waive the physiological question altogether, there 
is still a psychological factor in the general problem. 
For the velocity, with which a physical phenomenon is 

* The origination of psychophysical investigations is due to a 
veteran German physiologist, G. T. Fechner, though he generously 
ascribes to Professor E. H. Weber the discovery of the psychophysi- 
cal law. His original work, Elemente der Psychophysik (i860), is 
now out of print ; but a resume of its doctrines, as well as of the 
controversies and the literature which it has called forth, will be 
found in a later small work by the same author, In Sachen der 
Psychophysik (1877). More recently he has again returned to the 
subject in Revision der Hauptpunkte der Psychophysik (1882), 



The General Nature of Sensation. 29 

followed by a recognition of it on the part of an intelli- 
gent being, depends on the judgment which is involved 
in the act of recognition ; and that leads us into a sphere 
beyond the range of mere physical causation. It is a 
well known fact, therefore, that, whenever accurate ob- 
servations are required in reference to time, remarkable 
variations of judgment appear among different observers. 
These variations have attracted attention especially in the 
science of astronomy, where accuracy of calculation de- 
pends on exactness, even to fractions of a second, with 
regard to the time of an astronomical event ; and conse- 
quently it has become necessary, in taking observations, 
to form a " personal equation " in order to eliminate pos- 
sible error from this source. 



§ 3. — Classification of Sensations, 

We have seen that sensations differ not only in inten- 
sity, but also in quality or kind ; and we have now to 
seek a systematic arrangement of the different kinds of 
sensation in the same fashion as other sciences classify 
the phenomena with which they deal. For such an ar- 
rangement the first requisite is a natural principle of 
classification. Now the sensations, by their very nature, 
seem to furnish such a principle ; for they are connected, 
by some kind of natural law, with the alterations in ner- 
vous tissue that are brought about by the forces of the 
external universe. But these forces generally produce a 
different effect on different parts of the nervous organ- 
ism ; and therefore the differences of sensation hold a 
certain correspondence with the difference of the organs 
in which they originate. The distinction, then, between 
the organs of sensibility forms the fundamental principle 



30 Fsydiology. 

on which the sensations are classified. At the same time 
there are other facts, to which a subordinate value must 
be attached in guiding our classification. For even if we 
include in one genus all the sensations which originate in 
one organ, yet among these, numerous species, and still 
more numerous varieties, may often be distinguished. 
To trace such distinctions we must at times simply appeal 
to observations of consciousness, which are familiar to 
the every-day experience of men. For sensations, bein ' 
the simple or elementary facts of mind, cannot be defined 
or described by anything more simple or elementary. 
The only way in which a sensation can be made known 
is by being/'//. No descriptive language can ever make 
a person know what any particular sensation is, if he is 
incapable of feeling it. Those who are born blind can 
form no conception of a colour, nor those born deaf of 
a sound ; and if any one wishes to know the taste, or 
odour, or touch of a substance with which he is not 
familiar, he must taste or smell or handle it. But men 
who are normally formed feel all the ordinary sensations 
ot human life, and denote them by familiar terms ; so 
that we have no difficulty in referring to them as well- 
known facts of consciousness. For the differences of 
sensation are often clearly marked in our ordinary con- 
scious life ; and we can generally direct or correct our ob- 
servations of these differences by referring to the organic 
processes or the physical agencies in which they have 
their origin. In fact, these agencies and processes are 
sometimes adopted as guides to independent classifica- 
tions of the senses which, even though imperfect, are full 
of fruitful suggestions. Thus, in reference to the organic 
process by which sensation is excited, the senses have 
sometimes been separated into two classes, distinguished 
as mechanical and chemical, touch being taken as type 



The General Nature of Sensation. 3 1 

of the former, taste and smell of the latter. Again, the 
senses of smell, taste, and touch may be characterised as 
being adapted to the gaseous, the liquid, and the solid 
conditions of matter respectively ; while hearing and 
sight, thermal and electrical sensibility, respond to the 
vibratory movements of which molecules or atoms are 
susceptible. 

But the accepted classification of the senses is that 
which follows the classification of the sentient organs. 
It is too common, however, to accept a popular descrip- 
tion which represents by far too restricted a conception 
about the varieties of sensibility. We have seen that we 
gain an adequate view of the complicated instrumentality 
with which mind is endowed, only when we regard the 
whole body, and not the brain merely, as the organ of 
mind. The whole bodily organism, with its elaborate 
system of nerves, is perpetually vibrating to the innumer- 
able vibrations of the world's forces, and wakening in 
consciousness the innumerable sensations that form the 
materials of our mental life. The kinds of sensation, 
therefore, are as various as the organs of the body, and 
the processes to which these are subject. Now, 
the classification of the bodily organs and their 
processes will naturally follow the order which 
is generally found convenient for anatomical and 
physiological description. But there is one group of 
organs distinctly marked off from the rest by the fact, 
that, by their very structure, they are adapted primarily 
to the function of giving specific kinds of sensation, and 
any other function they may subserve in the animal 
economy is evidently subordinate. Such, for example, 
are the ear and the eye, whose peculiar formation 
obviously renders them susceptible of being affected by 
the sound-waves of the atmosphere, and the light-waves 



32 Psychology. 

of ether respectively : these are the functions, to 
which they are specially differentiated. Accordingly, such 
organs are distinguished as the organs of the special senses. 
The other organs of the body do give rise to sensations ; 
but they do so only incidentally, in the performance of 
the various functions to which they are specially adapted 
by their structure. The muscles, the stomach, the lungs, 
and the other organs of animal life, are thus, at the same 
time, organs of sensation. The susceptibility of sensa- 
tion, which is thus spread over the organs of the body in 
general, is commonly called the general sensibility. Its 
various forms may, in contrast with the special senses, be 
appropriately named the general senses ; but the language 
of psychology, in reference to this distinction, is not yet 
fixed. 



The Special Senses. 33 



CHAPTER IL 



THE SPECIAL SENSES. 

THESE are what are called the five senses. They are 
here, for a reason that will be afterwards explained, 
taken up in the following order : — taste, smell, touch, 
hearing, sight. In the account of each we shall follow 
the order already adopted in treating of sensation in gen- 
eral; we shall describe (1) the organ, (2) the substances 
or agencies by which the organ is excited, (3) the sensa- 
tions which result from such excitatioa 

§ 1.— Taste. 

(A) The organ of this sense is situated in the back of 
the mouth. The most important parts of the organ are 
the posterior region of the upper surface of the tongue, 
and the soft palate, that is, the posterior portion of the 
palate. But the adjoining structures, called the pillars 
of the soft palate and the tonsils, are also sensitive to 
taste. The gustative sensibility of the palate has im- 
pressed itself on ordinary language in the use of the word 
palate for taste, not only as a noun, but, formerly, also as 
a verb,* and in the verbal adjective palatable. 

* " Not palating the taste of her dishonour." 

Troilus and Cressida, Act iv., Sec. I. 
C 



34 Psychology. 

(B) Sapid substances, as belonging to the physical 
world, form a subject of investigation for the physical 
sciences. It is for the chemist especially to trace the 
constituent of any substance, on which its taste depends. 
It may be sufficient here to notice merely two facts about 
sapid bodies, — one referring to their physical condition, 
the other to their chemical character. The first is, that 
they must all be either liquids or solids in a state of solu- 
tion ; it is, in fact, a familiar experience of every-day life, 
that a dry substance yields no taste till it has been 
moistened or dissolved in the mouth. The other fact 
with regard to sapid bodies is that they are crystalloids, 
while colloids are tasteless. 

It is for the physiologist to explain the mode in which 
bodies act upon the organ of taste. It has been already 
mentioned that taste ranks among the senses which are 
distinguished as chemical ; and it does so because sapid 
substances, when dissolved in the mouth, seem to under- 
go some kind of chemical reaction, by which they stimu- 
late the terminal filaments of the gustatory nerve. A dry 
substance could not set up the necessary reaction, and a 
colloid, being unable to permeate animal tissue, could 
not reach the nerves underlying the mucous membrane 
of the mouth. Only crystalloids, therefore, in a state of 
solution can excite taste. 

(C) Among gustatory sensatio?is or tastes we must dis- 
tinguish those that are properly, from those that are im- 
properly, so named. 

I. Of tastes proper there have been various attempts at 
classification. " Plato and Galen reckon seven, Aristotle 
and Theophrastus eight, species of simple tastes. These 
are estimated at ten by Boerhaave and Linnaeus, by 
Haller at twelve."* More modern writers have given 

* Sir W. Hamilton in RdeTs Works, p. 116, note. 



The Special Senses. 35 

different enumerations, so that no classification can yet 
be said to be universally accepted. 

II. But many sensations are improperly called tastes, 
being in reality sensations of a different sense altogether, 
or mixed with such sensations. 

1. Smell undoubtedly contributes to many so-called 
tastes. This fact seems to be implied in the words flavour 
and savour, which are both used for tastes and smells 
indiscriminately ; and it was pointed out so long ago, 
at least, as by Lord Bacon.* It explains why a catarrh 
generally renders a person insensible apparently to tastes 
which can be readily appreciated in health, the real in- 
sensibility being to the odour of bodies that are put into 
the mouth. From the same cause the unpleasantness of 
nauseous drugs may often be lessened or removed by 
holding the nose while they are swallowed, and a fuller 
gratification seems to be obtained from wines, especiall) 
when sparkling, by the use of wide glasses. So obtrusive 
is this element of odour in many of the familiar' sensa- 
tions of taste, that some writers have gone to the extreme 
of holding all flavour to be due to the sense of smell ; 
but this is contradicted by cases in which the sense of 
smell has been destroyed without the taste being im- 
paired.! 

2. Some of the general sensations, called alimentary, 
also mingle and become confounded at times with pure 
tastes. By alimentary sensations are meant those ex- 
cited in the alimentary canal, that is, the passage through 
which the food is conveyed in the process of digestion. 
The parts of this canal nearest to the mouth, namely the 
oesophagus and the stomach, give rise to a variety of 

* Novum Organou, Book ii., Anhor. 26 

t Carpenter's Human Physiology, § 744 (American Ed., 1S60). 



36 Psychology. 

sensations simultaneously with tastes ; and it is not 
always easy to distinguish them from tastes even by 
attentive observation. The canal is similar in structure, 
and is immediately contiguous, to the posterior region of 
the mouth, in which the sense of taste is situated ; and 
as soon as a sapid body is introduced into the mouth, it 
dissolves in the saliva, its particles in solution find their 
way inio the oesophagus and stomach, and excite the 
sensibility of these or-ans. It is scarcely possible, 
therefore, to determine with exactness where gustatory 
sensibility terminates, and the sensibility of the alimen- 
tary canal begins ; so that the sensations of taste are to 
be viewed as merely the first in a long series of sensations 
connected with the digestion of food. It is on this 
account that, whenever any article of food is introduced 
into the mouth, we feel whether it is agreeable to the 
stomach or not, that is, we feel the stomachic sensations 
of relish or nausea. 

3. Another class of general sensations, which cannot 
here be more definitely described than as being of an 
irritating character, are sometimes confounded with tastes 
proper. Such are the sensations produced by substances 
like alcohol, pepper, as well as other spices, and com- 
monly spoken of as pimgent, sharp, or fiery tastes. 
That these are quite distinct from true tastes is evident 
from two circumstances. (a) Mechanical irritation, 
such as is caused by a smart rap or a scratch with the 
finger on the tongue, may excite similar sensations, (b) 
They can be excited also on other parts of the body be- 
sides the organ of taste. Not only is the mucous mem- 
brane, which lines the whole mouth, the nostrils, and the 
alimentary canal, irritable under the action of such sub- 
stances, but the most powerful of them at least can set 



The Special Senses. 37 

up severe inflammation even in the tougher skin which 
covers the exterior of the organism. 



§ 2. —Smell. 

(A) The organ of this sense is the posterior region of 
the nostrils. The fact that there are two nostrils brings 
them into analogy with the organs of the higher senses, 
which are also double, and which derive an increase of 
efficiency from this feature. In man, however, the organ 
of smell is not so highly developed as in some of the 
lower animals, especially the carnivorous. The cerebral 
ganglion, from which the olfactory nerve proceeds to the 
nostrils, is in man a comparatively insignificant bulb of 
nervous matter, while in those animals it forms a con- 
siderable proportion of the whole brain. It may there- 
fore be said that there is more brain-power expended in 
smelling by those animals than by man. The signifi- 
cance of this fact in comparative anatomy will appear 
when we come to analyse the perceptions of this sense. 
It will then be shown that in man the sense has lost in 
cognitional pcwer, while its emotional side has become 
predominant. 

(B) Odorous substances furnish interesting subjects of 
investigation to the chemist. Without entering into 
details which have no bearing on psychology, there are 
two facts worth noticing here. 

I. Odorous bodies are either gases, or, if liquids or 
solids, they must be volatile. Any agent, therefore, like 
heat, which increases volatility, also intensifies odour. 
Accordingly, odour is conceived to be due to minute 
particles, called effluvia, emitted by odorous bodies. 
These particles, being diffused throughout the atmos» 



38 Psychology. 

phere, are carried, by the act of inhaling, through the 
nostrils, where they excite the sensation of smell.* 

II. Odorous bodies have all a strong affinity for 
oxygen; and substances like hydrogen, which do not 
combine with oxygen at ordinary temperatures are in- 
odorous. Chemical observations afford ground for 
believing that the effluvia of an odorous body become 
oxidised in the nostrils in the act of stimulating the 
olfactory nerve. It is consequently inferred that the 
action of bodies on this sense, as on taste, is chemical. 

(C) In regard to the sensations of smell there is a con- 
fusion similar to that which has been already ncticed in 
reference to tastes. 

I. Of smells properly so called various classifications 
have been attempted, but none generally recognised. 
In fact, the language of common life shows a remarkable 
absence of names for distinct odours, the only definite 
distinction being that which is based on pleasantness 
and unpleasantness — sweet or fragrant perfumes, and 
stinks or stenches. 

It has sometimes been asserted that the odour-sense 
has been evolved within the human race, and even 
within historical times. But the evidence of compara- 
tive psychology is apt to be misinterpreted. The truth 
is, as already indicated, that, in the transition from the 
low r er animals to man, there has been an increase merely 
in sensibility to the agreeableness and disagreeableness 



* This explanation has been almost universally accepted in 
science. The only difficulty connected with it is the fact, thai 
highly odorous substances like musk have been known to emit 
effluvia for years without suffering an appreciable diminution of 
weight or bulk. But this fact is matched by other evidences cf the 
indefinite divisibility cf matter. 



The Special Senses. 39 

of odours, while there has been a diminution in the 
power of perception by scent — a diminution which seems 
an instance at once of organic atrophy and of intellectual 
degeneration, arising from the disuse of a faculty.* 

II. But not a few sensations are improperly called 
odours, because they are in reality sensations of a differ- 
ent class, or mixed with such sensations. 

1. Pulmonary sensations, that is, sensations connected 
with the action of the lungs, become inevitably con- 
founded with odours. In the act of breathing, the air, 
carrying the effluvia of bodies, passes through the nos- 
trils on its way to the lungs ; and the sensations awakened 
arise often as much from the state of the lungs as from 
the state of the nostrils. This is the case with what 
are called fresh and close smells. A close smell is the 
sensation experienced in an over-crowded assembly or 
ill-ventilated room, where the vitiated atmosphere does 
not supply a sufficient quantity of oxygen for healthy 
respiration. The feeling excited is not merely that of 
irritation in the nostrils, but a consciousness of de- 
pression diffused over the whole animal system, which 
depends for its vitality at every moment on the aeration 
of the blood through the lungs. On the other hand, 
some of the most voluminous pleasures of our animal 
nature are due to the combination of delicious odours 
with the bracing effect upon all the powers of life arising 
from the stimulation of cool fresh air. Any one who, 
after being confined during the heat of a wet summer 
day, has gone out to walk in a country redolent with the 
fragrance which the showers have drawn from the sur- 



* This is illustrated afterwards in connection with the perception! 
of smell. 



40 Psychology. 

rounding vegetation, may have recalled the fine ode in 
/// Memoriam : — 

" Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, 

That rollcst from the gorgeous gloom 
Of evening, over brake and bloom 
And meadow, slowly breathing bare 

The round of space, and rapt beluw 
Through all the dewy-tasselled wood, 
And shadowing down the horned flood 

In ripples, fan my brow, and blow 

The fever from my cheeks, and sigh 
The full new life that feeds thy breath 
Through all my frame, till Doubt and Death, 

111 brethren, let the fancy fly 

From belt to belt of crimson seas 

On leagues of odour streaming far 

To where in yonder orient star 
A hundred spirits whisper, Peace." 

2. The alimentary canal also seems to be affected as 
much as the nostrils in many so-called smells. Whether 
this is due to effluvia passing into the canal and irritating 
its interior coat, or to some nervous connection between 
the organ of smell and the organs of digestion, is a prob- 
lem for physiology to solve. Many aromatic substances, 
however, both solid and liquid, various kinds of flesh 
when well cooked, especially when highly spiced or 
flavoured with sauce, undoubtedly excite the stomach, 
and stimulate the appetite, by their odour; and it is this 
that makes the artifices of cookery so valuable when the 
appetite is not naturally strong. So, too, many smells, 
by the fact that they are called disgusting, indicate that 
they are irritating to the alimentary canal. When the 
stomach is already out of order, it is easily thrown into 
violent nausea by any disagreeable smells ; but even in 



The Special Senses. 41 

health some horrible odours, especially when unexpected, 
produce a disturbance of the digestive organs. 

3. Putigent smells, like the taste described by the 
same name, seem to be rather general sensations of 
an irritating character than smells strictly so called. 
This may be made evident from two considerations : — 
(a) Sensations similar to those excited by snuff, pepper, 
ammonia, &c, can be produced by mechanical irritation, 
as, for example, by the sudden contact of the nostrils 
with a cold atmosphere, or by tickling them with a 
feather or a straw. This mechanical irritation will even 
start the spasmodic act of sneezing, which results from 
the more violent sensations of a pungent character, (b) 
Moreover, persons who have long indulged in the use of 
snuff sometimes lose the sense of smell proper, while 
remaining sensitive to the pungency of their favourite 
stimulant. 

§ 1.— Touch. 

(A) In the most general meaning of the term the 
organ of touch is the skin of the whole body, includ- 
ing the membranes which line the mouth, the nostrils, 
and other internal organs. The skin consists of two 
layers. The outermost is an insensitive protective 
covering, called the scarf skin (cuticle, or epidermis). 
Underlying this is the true skin (cutis vera, or derma), 
which is sensitive. But the sensibility of the skin to 
the contact of foreign bodies is dependent on certain 
minute elevations under the true skin called papillae, 
which are found to be most largely developed in size 
and number at those parts which are proved by experi- 
ment to be most sensitive to touch. It appears, there- 
fore, that different parts of the general organ of touch 



42 Psychology. 

possess different degrees of acuteness. To determine 
the extent of this difference, experiments were first insti- 
tuted by a distinguished German physiologist, Professor 
E. H. Weber; and the results, at which he arrived, have 
been, in general, confirmed by subsequent observers. 
His aim was to discover at what distance two points 
could be felt distinct on different parts of the skin. For 
this purpose, he used a pair of compasses with blunted 
points ; anil the persons, on whom he experimented, 
were blindfolded, to present the sight from coming to 
aid the touch. It is unnecessary here to state in detail 
the results obtained. Suffice it to say that the most 
acute parts were found to be the tip of the tongue and 
the palmar surface of the tip of the forefinger, where 
the points of the compasses could be felt distinct at the 
distance of half a line and one line respectively; while 
on the most obtuse parts, which were proved to be the 
middle of the back, the arm, and the thigh, the points 
made two distinguishable impressions only at the dis- 
tance of thirty lines. It may be observed that these 
results represent merely the average sensibility, for in 
making experiments of this sort, it must always be borne 
in mind, that the same part exhibits various degrees of 
acuteness in different individuals and even in the same 
individual at different periods. Moreover, these experi- 
ments test merely one form of tactile sensibility ; but, as 
far as touch proper is concerned, all its forms are fairly 
represented by the sensibility to distinctness in the 
points of contact. 

The most sensitive part of the general organ of touch 
appears thus to be the tip of the tongue ; but in many 
respects it is obviously incapable of being used for 
ordinary tactile observations so conveniently as the 
finger-tips. For delicate observations, however, the 



The Special Senses. 43 

blind are often seen employing the tip of the tongue. 
With this organ, blind women sometimes thread their 
needles, and John Gough, the blind botanist, used to 
examine any plant with which he was not familiar, 
though he could readily distinguish common plants by 
the touch of his fingers.* But apart from the obvious 
inconveniences of such an employment of the tongue, 
the finger-tips are infinitely better adapted by their posi- 
tion and structure for the ordinary examination of tangible 
bodies. The numerous joints of the fingers, along with 
those at the wrists, the elbows, and the shoulders, give 
an enormous sweep and a great variety of direction to the 
movements of the finger-tips, while in two respects they 
exhibit that doubleness which has been already referred 
to as a characteristic feature in the organs of the higher 
senses, each hand acting against the other, and the 
thumb acting against the fingers in each hand. The 
finger-tips are thus admirably adapted at once for dex- 
teiity of manipulation, and for delicacy of discernment in 
regard to the geometrical and physical properties of 
bodies. In fact, there is no organ of sense, in which the 
superiority of man to the lower animals, with their 
clumsy hoofs and paws, is so definitely marked, as in the 
organ of touch ; and since the time when Anaxagoras 
declared it to be the hands that make man the most in- 
telligent of animals, it has been frequently observed that 
there seems to be a proportion between the development 
of general intelligence and the development of touch in 
the animal kingdom, f 

* Less commonly the lips are used by the blind for accurate 
touch, as in reading raised type (Levy's Blindness and the Blind, 
p. 58). Dr. Franz's patient sometimes examined objects with the 
lips {Philosophical Transactions for 1841, p. 62). 

t An interesting exposition of this proportion will be found in 
Spencer's Principles of Psychology, § 163-4. 



44 Psychology. 

To sum up, while the general organ of touch is the 
skin of the whole body, the special organ of the sense 
may be limited to the finger-tips. Numerous symbolical 
actions in which the hand is the chief instrument em- 
ployed ; numerous figurative expressions in which the 
word hand, or its derivatives, convey the principal idea 
— to be at /land or on hand, to be in the hands or under 
the hand of, to lay hands on, hands off I handy, handsome, 
handsel, handle — the various compounds like handbook, 
handiwork, manufacture, etr — all these point to a recog- 
nition, even by the popular mind, of the fact, that the 
hand is the conspicuous organ of active intelligence. * 

(B) The action of tangible bodies contrasts with that of 
sapid and odorous bodies by being purely mechanical — 
mechanical pressure. Accordingly, any form of matter, 
which can exert such pressure, may become an object of 
touch. Even the air or any gas may be felt, if brought 
with sufficient force against the skin, as when we are 
standing against a breeze, or moving rapidly through a 



* In connection with the organ of touch the phenomenon of right- 
handedness deserves notice, though the superiority of the right hand 
consists rather in its prehensile than in its sensitive power. Ex- 
tremely divergent views on the source of this peculiarity are still 
maintained. Some hold that it implies merely a degeneration of 
the left hand from comparative disuse, and that ambidexterity — 
double-righthandedness, to use a Hibernicism — might and should 
be generally cultivated. The science of evolutionism, however, at 
the present day tends to look upon righthandedness as one of the 
differentiations naturally arising in the process of evolution, and in- 
fers that instances of lefthandedness are merely survivals from an 
earlier stage of the process. Perhaps the completest discussion of 
the subject in all its historical and scientific details will be found in 
a recent dissertation by Dr. Daniel Wilson On the Right Hand and 
Lefthandedness in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 
for 1S86. 



The Special Senses. 45 

still atmosphere ; and instances may be adduced of deli- 
cate tactile perceptions by means of the pulse of the air 
on the face. Liquids also, in so far as they can press 
against the skin, are tangible. In virtue of the law which 
requires change or contrast of excitement in order to 
sensation, a jet of air or water is felt with special ease, 
as a spot of light or colour becomes peculiarly distinct 
against a dark ground, or a faint tone is heard most 
clearly amid a profound silence. By the same law, 
when any part of the body is at rest in water, the contact 
of the water is felt only along the line of its surface, as 
the continued even pressure of a solid on the skin is felt 
only around the edge. Commonly, however, in the 
action of gases as well as of liquids on the organ of 
touch, their temperature is more obtrusively felt than 
their contact. It is, therefore, the solid condition that is 
appropriate to this sense. 

(C) It is an often-quoted saying of the ancient philo- 
sopher Democritus, that all the senses are merely modi- 
fications of touch ; and there is a certain amount of truth 
in the statement, inasmuch as the special senses are all 
normally excited by the impact of external forces on their 
organs. On this account touch is sometimes spoken of 
as the primitive sense of animal life — the rudimentary 
type out of which all the other senses have been evolved. 
But this could be held true only of an indefinite sensibi- 
lity to the contact of foreign bodies, not of the highly 
specialised touch of man. It has long been recognised 
that the human sense called by this name combines 
several forms of dermal sensibility ; and it is scarcely 
possible for science to define with precision all these 
varieties.* Of touch, even in its strictest definition, the 
sensations are various. 

* At the present day experiments are being carried on, both in 



46 Psychology. 

I. Perhaps the simplest and purest form of touch is 
that, in which a body is felt in mere contact with the 
skin, without exciting any sensation of positive pressure. 

II. Next to this are the sensations which depend en 
different degrees of pressure. Hie pressure may arise 
either from the repulsion of the particles composing a 
body, or from its attraction towards the centre of the 
earth. On the sensations thus originated, therefore, is 
lu^ed our knowledge of the comparative hardness and 
softness, the comparative heaviness and lightness, of 
bodies. Here, however, touch is supplemented by the 
muscular sense. In all ordinary instances in which we 
feel hardness or softness, we squeeze the body between 
the fingers so as to discover the degree of resistance it 
offers to the muscular effort of squeezing it; commonly, 
also, when we feel the weight of a body, we try how 
much muscular force requires to be exerted by the hands 
or arms to keep it from being drawn to the earth. Still 
the touch by itself can feel different degrees of pressure ; 
and the experiments of Weber tend to show that this 
sensibility of the skin varies in acuteness, at different 
parts, in tolerably exact correspondence with the sensi- 
bility to separate points. 

III. The last form of tactile sensibility is that which 
implies pressure at more points than one. From this, as 
will afterwards appear, we form our perception of the 
mutual externality of different points. To it we owe 
also the sensations connected with smooth and rough 

Europe and America, which promise some fruitful results in regard 
to the more exact science of touch. Some account of these experi- 
ments, especially of those conducted by Prof. Hall and Dr. Donald- 
son in the psychophysical laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity in Baltimore, will be found in Mind for July and October, 1885, 
and January, 1886. 



The Special Senses. 47 

surfaces : for if a number of points simultaneously in 
contact with the skin are felt to be absolutely continuous, 
the sensation is that of smoothness or fineness ; whereas, 
if the continuity is felt to be broken by minute intervals 
between the points, the sensation is that of rough or 
coarse touch. In these sensations, also, touch is usually 
aided by the muscular sense, by rubbing the finger-tips 
over the tangible surface. 

To guard against misapprehension, it may be well to 
notice here several sensations which are apt to be con- 
founded with touches, inasmuch as they are located on 
the skin, and perhaps even the nerves of touch form the 
organ of sensibility in the case of some. 

1. Among the most prominent of these are those 
irritating sensations which have been already described 
as pungent tastes and odours. 

2. Tickling is another familiar sensation connected 
with the skin. The nervous condition, upon which this 
feeling depends, is unknown ; and, therefore, 'it is 
impossible to tell what makes one part of the skin 
sensitive to tickling rather than others ; but it may be 
observed that the most sensitive parts, such as the 
armpits and the soles of the feet, are those of 
comparatively obtuse tactile sensibility. As a pheno- 
menon in consciousness, however, the sensation is 
very distinctly marked. In its milder forms it constitutes 
a pleasurable excitement ; but when excessive in dura- 
tion or intensity, it becomes more or less intolerable. 
In all forms it is exciting, and is apt to explode in spas- 
modic actions, such as a sneeze or an hysterical laugh. 

3. Another cutaneous sensation of an irritating char 
acter is itch, which is also clearly defined in conscious- 
ness, whatever may be its nervous cause. 

4. In this connection ought to be mentioned the sen- 



48 Psychology. 

sation of tingling, which is popularly described by saying 
that a limb is " asleep." 

5. Lastly, the sensation of the temperature of the skin 
must likewise be distinguished from a touch, properly so 
called. 



§ 4. — Hearing. 

(A) The organ of hearing is perhaps the most com- 
plicated structure of the same size in the human body. 
Only its most general features can or need be noticed 
here. It is divided into three parts — the external, the 
middle, and the internal, ear. 

I. The external ear consists of two parts : — (1) the pinna, 
that is, the wing-like structure which projects from the 
side of the head, and the convolutions of which seem to 
collect the vibrations of the atmosphere for transmission 
into (2) the meatus auditorius, the passage by which 
these vibrations are conveyed to the interior of the organ. 

II. The middle ear, called also the tympanum or drum, 
is a bony cavity, separated from the auditory passage by 
a membrane — the membrana tympani — and communicat- 
ing with the mouth, and therefore with the external at- 
mosphere, by means of a passage called the Eustachian 
tube. This part of the ear contains a chain of three 
small bones, attached at one end to the membrana tym- 
pani, and at the other end to a membrane — the mem- 
brana vsstibuli — which separates the middle from the in- 
ternal ear. 

III. The internal ear is also a bony cavity, or rather a 
set of cavities, so complicated in structure as to obtain 
the name of labyrinth. This set of cavities contains a 
membranous sac — the membranous labyrinth — suspended 



The Special Senses. 49 

in a fluid, and attached to the terminal filaments of the 
auditory nerve. 

The ear is thus an organ specially adapted to be sensi- 
tive to minute vibrations. Vibratory movements in 
general, and especially those of a coarser character, are 
apt to communicate themselves to all elastic bodies, and 
may thus be transmitted through the atmosphere to 
objects at a considerable distance. Thus a discharge of 
artillery will smash glass windows, and shake heavy 
masonry in the neighbourhood, while its shock can be 
distinctly felt by the general sensibility of the organism. 
The rumble of a waggon passing on the street shakes the 
ground on which we tread, and sends a tremor through 
all our frame. Even the finer vibration of a wire 
in a musical instrument may shoot a thrill through 
the fingers, or through other parts of the body, 
by which the wire is touched. Ordinarily these 
general forms of sensibility to vibratory movement 
are scarcely noticed, because the special sensations of 
hearing are so much more valuable. But to the deaf 
such substitutes for the lost special sense are often wel- 
come. Laura Bridgman, who is blind as well as deaf, 
has often surprised her teachers by the readiness with 
which she could perceive the vibrations of audible bodies 
through her hands or even her feet* In the morning 
she knew when it was time to rise by putting her finger 
in the keyhole of a door beside her bed and "feeling" 



* Life and Education of Laura Bridgman, by Mrs. Mary Swift 
Lamson, pp. 68-9, 75, 85, 109, III, 133, 135, 209, 260. Dr. 
Kitto describes with great vividness his almost morbid sensibility 
to these general impressions of vibrations on the organism. Se« 
the chapter on Percussions in The Lost Senses. 

D 



50 Psychology. 

the vibration caused by the other girls moving about.* 
She used to find great enjoyment in a musical box by 
placing it on a chair with her feet on one of the spnrs 
and thus " feeling it play."f She even seemed to take 
pleasure in the rhythm of a vibration, as she kept time 
to it herself. J 

The organism in general is thus found to be sensitive 
to vibratory movements ; but this sensibility is immensely 
increased by being specialised in a particular organ 
differentiated for this function from the rest of the 
organism. The essential part of this special organ is 
evidently the internal car. The sensibility of the audi- 
tory nerve can be excited by merely agitating the fluid 
with which this part is filled, .and thus throwing into 
vibration the minute nerve-threads which are suspended 
in the fluid. Thus a person, deaf to all ordinary sounds, 
may be made to feel, not merely the general thrill of a 
vibratory movement, but veritable sensations of hearing, 
by vibrations conveyed to the labyrinth from the bones 
of the head. A young Scotch lad, named James 
Mitchell, a blind deaf-mute like Laura Bridgman, 
showed in his childhood " an eager desire to strike upon 
his foreteeth anything he could get hold of; this he 
would do for hours, and seemed particularly gratified if 
it was a key, or any instrument that gave a shaip sound 
when struck against his teeth." § In like manner, an 
ordinary sound may be intensified, if it is conveyed to 



* Ibid., p. 191. 

\Ibid., p. 331. 

% /did., p. 225. 

§ Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. 
Hi., p. 319 (Hamilton's edition), where an elaborate account of 
Mitchell will be found. 



The Special Senses. 5 1 

the internal ear, not only by the ordinary channel of the 
external and middle ears, but by vibrations in the bones 
of the head. Thus if a watch, whose tick at the distance 
of a few inches may be scarcely perceptible, is pressed 
against the ear or placed between the teeth, the move- 
ment of every wheel seems to become audible. Other 
familiar facts, illustrating this intensification of sound, 
will readily occur to any one's mind. 

But the ordinary mode in which the sensibility of the 
ear is excited is by vibrations of the atmosphere carried 
through the auditory passage and the tympanum into 
the labyrinth. 

(B) A sonorous body is any form of matter which is 
capable of exciting atmospheric vibrations. This pro- 
perty of bodies, as well as the collateral property of 
transmitting atmospheric vibrations, forms the subject of 
the physical science of Acoustics. From that science, as 
well as from the theory of music, the student of psycho- 
logy will often find material assistance in studying the 
mental phenomena of hearing. Such data of these 
sciences as are required to explain mental phenomena 
will be noticed in their proper place ; but the student is 
referred, for fuller information, to the most important 
work on the subject in modern times, Helmholtz's Lehre 
-(•on den Tone/up/in duugm* 

(C) Sound is the general name applied to all sensa- 
tions of hearing. Like other sensations, sounds vary in 
intensity, the intensity of a sound being what we familiarly 
call its comparative loudness. This property of sounds 



* On the Sensations of Tone, as a Physiological Basis for the 
Theory of Music, by H. Helmholtz, M.D. Translated, with 
Additional Notes and an Additional Appendix, by Alexander 
Ellis, B.A. London, 1875. 



52 Psychology. 

depends on the breadth or amplitude of the vibrations 
by which they are produced. If you take a string in a 
musical instrument and pull it to one side, on letting it 
go it rebounds to the opposite side, and continues to 
swing for a while with a gradually decreasing breadth of 
movement. It will be observed that with the decrease 
in the breadth of the movement there is a corresponding 
decrease in the loudness of the sound produced. This 
explains, among other phenomena, the familiar fact, that 
a sound, proceeding from a distant body, is fainter than 
when produced near at hand ; for the sound-waves in 
the atmosphere, like the waves on the surface of water, 
diminish in breadth the farther they travel. 

Besides the physical condition of intensity, there is 
also an organic condition. It depends on the tension 
of the membrane of the drum ; for the membrane will 
evidently be agitated less, the more its tension is in- 
creased. Any cause, therefore, like yawning, or blowing 
the nose, which increases the tension of this membrane, 
deadens sounds. This effect is specially observable on 
sounds of a grave character, which are produced by long 
slow vibrations, though it may be scarcely noticed in the 
case of shrill sounds, that is, those that are produced by 
short rapid vibrations. Now, the tension of the mem- 
brane in question is regulated by two muscles, — the 
tensor tympani and the stapedius, — and, by the sensi- 
bility residing in these muscles, we must feel to what 
extent the membrane is tightened or slackened, before 
we can be aware of the intensity of a sound. In being 
conscious, therefore, of loudness or faintness, it would 
seem that muscular, as well as auditory, sensibility is 
called into play. 

While sounds vary by this general difference of in- 
tensity, they are distinguishable into two classes by 



The Special Senses. 53 

another very marked difference. The one class are 
called tones or musical sounds, the other, noises or un- 
musical sounds. The former are produced by isochronous 
(equal-timed) vibrations, that is, by vibrations which are 
equal in number in equal times. If, for example, a tone, 
produced by 500 vibrations in a second, were prolonged 
for any length of time, it would continue, during every 
subsequent second, to be produced by precisely the same 
number of vibrations. On the other hand, the vibrations 
producing a noise are destitute of any similar periodicity. 
Now, tones vary, not only in the general property of 
intensity, but in a special property termed pitch. There 
is another property which constitutes a difference among 
tones. It is commonly called quality ; but on its 
ultimate analysis, it will be found to be a modification of 
pitch. These two properties of tones we shall now 
examine. 

1. The pitch of a tone is its position in the musical 
scale, and this is determined by the rapidity of the 
vibrations producing it. The more numerous the 
vibrations caused by a sonorous body in a given time, 
the higher is the pitch of the tone produced. Tones 
may, therefore, be varied in pitch by an insensible 
gradation, so that they are not separated by an absolute 
distinction. But from very early times a scale has been 
formed in which different tones hold a fixed position in 
relation to one another. This scale starts from the fact, 
that there is an easily recognisable interval between 
tones, when one results from twice the number of the 
vibrations producing the other. Such an interval is 
called an octave^ because the tone at one extreme is 
eighth from the other. The musical scale, therefore, is 
composed of seven tones, which repeat themselves in 
ever ascending octaves. The intervals between the 



54 Psychology. 

several parts of the octave are not all the same, but the 
nature of the interval in each case is a subject which 
must be left for the theory of music. The larger 
intervals are called tones ; the smaller, semi-tones j but 
these terms want precise definition, as a tone is not 
necessarily equal to two semi-tones, except in instruments 
tuned on a peculiar principle. Some people, again, like 
the Arabs, use even quarter-tones in their music. 

The compass of the ear's sensibility to pitch may be 
roughly estimated as extending over seven octaves, the 
lowest tone being produced by about 40 vibrations in a 
second, the highest by about 4000. The seven-octave 
piano goes down to A of 27^ vibrations, and on larger 
organs there is even a C of 16^ vibrations; but when 
these low notes are struck by themselves, a succession 
of separate pulses is heard rather than a single tone. 
These notes are, accordingly, used always in combina- 
tion with notes an octave above, which have the effect 
of fusing their vibrations into one tone. In the ascend- 
ing scale the seven-octave piano stops at A of 3520 
vibrations ; but notes as high as would be represented 
by about 38,000 vibrations in a second, can be detected 
by the ear, though with difficulty. Such higher notes, 
however, are too painfully shrill to be of use for musical 
purposes, but, if we take them into account, the compass 
of the ear embraces about eleven octaves. 

2. There is another property of tones commonly 
called in English by the somewhat indefinite term 
quality. For greater definiteness the French timbre is 
occasionally employed for quality, and some recent 
writers have adopted the term clang-tint as a translation 
of the German klangfarbe. By quality is meant the 
peculiarity that a tone receives from the instrument by 
which it is produced. If a tone of a certain pitch 



The Special Senses. 55 

and intensity is produced by several instruments of 
different sorts in succession, notwithstanding the same- 
ness of pitch and intensity, a difference can be 
detected in the different renderings of the tone. 
This difference arises partly from causes extrinsic to 
the tone, such as the stroke of fingers or hammers, 
or the rush of wind. But after eliminating all such 
extrinsic circumstances, there remains a certain pecu- 
liarity, intrinsic to the tone itself, and distinctive of the 
instrument by which it is produced. It is this intrinsic 
peculiarity in the tone of an instrument that is understood 
by its quality. 

In explanation of this peculiarity the fact has been 
observed, that tones are usually composite. There can 
be detected in them, not only a prominent fundamental 
tone which gives its character to the whole, but a series 
of fainter tones occupying a higher position on the 
musical scale. These over-tones stand in a definite 
ratio to the fundamental tone, the first being produced 
by twice the number of the vibrations producing that 
tone, the second by thrice, the third by four times that 
number, and so on by an uniformly increasing multiple. 
Now, there are a few tones, like that of a tuning-fork, 
which possess an apparent simplicity, though there is 
ground for questioning whether even these are absolutely 
unaccompanied by over-tones ; but the rule is, that tones 
exhibit this composite character. It is further observed 
that the tones of one instrument are accompanied by 
over-tones which cannot be detected in those of another ; 
and the conclusion has, therefore, been drawn, that the 
quality of the tone is determined by its accompanying 
over-tones. The same fact is also expressed by saying, 
that the quality of a tone depends on the form of its 
vibrations; for the atmospheric waves, representing its 



56 Psychology. 

overtones, must modify the form of the wave repre- 
senting the fundamental tone. 

% 5-— Sight 

(A) The organ of this sense can be more easily 
described than the ear. The eye is a ball, nearly 
spherical in shape, the interior of which forms a dark 
chamber like the photographer's camera obscura. The 
only aperture, by which light can find admittance into 
this chamber, is the pupil, which shows like a black spot 
in consequence of the intense darkness of the interior. 
This darkness is owing to a black pigment in the internal 
lining of the eye : otherwise the interior is perfectly 
pervious to light, being filled with transparent humours. 
Of these humours the most important is called the 
crystalline /ens. It lies directly behind the pupil, so that 
it refracts every ray of light that enters the eye. Being 
a convexo-convex lens, it brings to a focus the rays of 
light radiating from objects in front of the pupil, and 
thus forms an image of these objects on the internal coat 
of the eye. This coat is called the retina, because it is 
mainly a network of minute fibres from the optic nerve. 
These nerve-fibres are excited by the rays of light 
converging upon them, and visual sensation is the result. 
It remains to be added that the eye is supplied with 
an elaborate set of muscles, which impart to it that ex- 
treme mobility upon which the charm of its expressive- 
ness depends. In consequence of the muscular sensibi- 
lity thus added to its own special sensibility, the value of 
the eye, as an organ of sense, is immensely increased. 

(B) The agent, therefore, in visual sensation is light, 
that is, light considered as a physical fact, not as a fact 
of consciousness. Physically considered, light is con- 



The Special Senses. 57 

jectured to be an inconceivably rapid vibration of an 
elastic ether diffused throughout space. Light is either 
original or reflected. In the former case, it originates in 
the body from which it comes to the eye, as in the sun 
and in terrestrial bodies at a high temperature. In the 
latter case, the body, which throws light on to the eye, 
derives it, mediately or immediately, from some original 
source of light. The light, which is thus reflected by a 
body, does not always render the body visible. If the 
body is a mirror, and the mirror is perfect, it reveals, 
not itself, but the objects in front, which throw on to it 
their original or reflected light. Except in the case of 
mirrors, reflection makes the reflecting body itself visible. 
In order to visibility a body must be more or less opaque. 
A perfectly transparent substance, allowing all the light 
which falls on it to pass through it, reflects none to the 
eye; so that it fails to stimulate the sensibility of the 
retina, and no vision takes place. 

(C) The sensations of sight are those of pure light and 
of colour. 

I. As a phenomenon in consciousness pure light 
appears simple, though its physical cause may, in a 
certain sense, be said to be composite : it may be decom- 
posed by a prism into the colours of the spectrum ; and 
these colours, by being combined, produce again the 
single sensation of pure or white light. 

II. Colours admit of an indefinite variety of modifica- 
tion ; but their variations run along either of two lines, 
tone and depth. 

1. Tone is the name given to the position of a colour 
on the spectrum or rainbow. If a sunbeam is made to 
pass through a prism, and caught by the eye or thrown 
on to a screen, it may be observed that it is broken up 
into a bar of variegated hues : this bar is technically 



58 Psychology. 

called a spectrum. On careful observation it is found 
that, even though there are occasional dark lines crossing 
the bar, its hues merge imperceptibly into each other ; 
but the extreme points are seen to be occupied by a line 
of red and a line of violet, while a green line distinguishes 
the centre. Between the red and the green two 
prominent types of colour may be marked — an orange 
and a yellow. At the other end indigo and blue lie 
between the violet and the green. The spectrum is, 
therefore, commonly divided into seven parts, — red, 
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. But the 
colours, red, green, and violet, occupying the three 
most prominent places on the spectrum, — its centre and 
its two extremities, — are distinguished by the name 
primary. The four intermediate colours, orange and 
yellow, blue and indigo, which can be produced by 
combinations of the primary colours, are called 
secondary. 

The division of the spectrum into seven tints has, not 
unnaturally, led to some ingenious speculations aiming 
at the establishment of an analogy between the so-called 
tones of colour and the seven tones on the musical scale. 
Whatever success may ultimately attend speculations of 
that drift, it is certain that even yet science is far from a 
fixed definition of the different colours, such as was 
reached long ago in the distinction of musical tones. In 
recent times, indeed, attempts have been made by 
physicists to establish a scientific nomenclature of 
colours by dividing the spectrum into definite parts, and 
assigning a specific colour-name to each. But the common 
names of colours in all languages are applied with that 
vagueness which might be expected from the fact, that 
there is no absolute line of demarcation between the 
different tints on the spectrum. This vagueness may be 



The Special Senses. 59 

due also to the circumstance, that colour-names in 
general seem to have been originally the names of 
familiar objects which naturally display certain colours,* 
while these colours, like that of the sea, for example, are 
apt, under various natural influences, to modify their 
tone considerably from hour to hour, from day to day, 
and from one season of the year to another. The com- 
mon names of colours must, therefore, be interpreted as 
covering each a considerable breadth on the spectrum, 
and as applicable, in consequence, to a considerable 
variety of tints. Accordingly, it is not a matter for sur- 
prise that colour-names should occasionally be employed 
with such latitude that they seem to be tossed at random 
over all sorts of natural phenomena. This want of 
exactness in the designation of colours forms the sole 
plausible ground for a recent hypothesis, that the sen- 
sibility to differences of colour, so far from being a pos- 
session of the lower animals or of primitive man,, has 
been developed in the human race within comparatively 
recent times. f The hypothesis, however, vanishes be- 
fore a critical exegesis of the ancient authors in light of 
the fact, that, in consequence of the imperceptible grada- 
tion of the colours on the spectrum, their names must be 
employed with a considerable latitude.} 

* This etymology is illustrated at length in Mr. Grant Allen's 
Colour-Sense^ chap. xiii. But the theory is perhaps too sweepingly 
stated. It seems an accepted doctrine among philologists, that 
word-roots primitively express an impression of sense ; and it 
remains still to be made out, that in no instance has a colour been 
the attribute primarily determining a name. 

+ See Geiger's Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit, iii., 
and an article by Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century for 
October, 1877. 

X Mr. Grant Allen's work on the Colour-Sense is largely occupied 
with a criticism of this hypothesis. 



60 Psychology. 

The problem of the difference of colour presents a 
physical and a physiological, as well as a psychological 
aspect, (a) So far as it concerns physics, the problem 
is solved by an application of the physical theory of 
light. On that theory, as already explained, light is 
conceived to be the vibration of an ethereal form of mat- 
ter diffused throughout space ; and the difference of 
colours is conceived as due to the varying velocities of 
the ethereal vibrations. At the red end of the spectrum 
it is calculated that the light-waves amount to 451 
billions in a second, while with increasing velocity they 
produce the other colours, till they attain the number of 
785 billions in a second at the highest limit of vision, 
where the violet rays appear, (b) The problem of the 
physiologist is to explain the effect of light on the organ 
of vision in such a way as may account for the various 
sensations of colour. Here, however, science has not 
yet attained the general agreement which prevails in 
regard to the physical source of the difference in colours. 
One theory maintains that the physiological explanation 
of this difference is to be found, not in a functional 
variation, but in organic structure. The conjecture is, 
that the terminal filaments of the optic nerve, which go 
to form the retina, are of three kinds at least, correspond- 
ing to the three primary colours, and that each set of* 
retinal fibres reacts only under the impulse of the 
colour-rays, to which it is adapted. This theory was 
suggested long ago by Young, and has been extensively 
adopted in recent times, especially under the influence 
of Helmholtz ; but it meets with opposition from 
physiologists so eminent as Wundt. The psychologist 
must, therefore, wait for further advance in the 
physiology of vision, before he can make use of any facts 
connected with the organic action of light to explain the 



The Special Senses. 61 

difference of colours, (c) With regard to the psycho- 
logical aspect of this difference more will be said in the 
sequel, when illustrating the function which colours 
perform in developing our mental life. Suffice it to 
observe at present a fact, the import of which will after- 
wards appear, that the colours at the red end of the 
spectrum belong to the exciting class of sensations, 
whereas they acquire a calmer tone as we pass towards 
the opposite end. 

2. A second variation of colours arises from their 
depth. It is unfortunate that the term intensity has been 
applied to the depth of colours ; for this term, as already 
explained, is the universally recognised technical expres- 
sion for the force with which a sensation obtrudes itself 
in consciousness. Like all sensations, those of sight 
vary in intensity, as a matter of course ; and of these 
variations an exact measurement is attempted in 
different ways by means of the various instruments, to 
which the name photometer is applied. But what is 
meant by depth of colour is that peculiarity which is 
sometimes expressed by speaking of one tint as darker 
or lighter than another. These expressions indicate the 
source of this peculiarity. It arises from colours being 
diluted with pure light in different degrees. Thus a 
dark blue is comparatively undiluted, while a light blue 
is comparatively diluted, with pure or white light. 

For further information on all subjects connected with 
vision, the student is referred to another great work of 
Helmholtz, Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik. 



62 Psychology. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE GENERAL SENSES. 

THE various forms of the general sensibility, which 
have been named in an earlier chapter* the general 
senses, were there distinguished from the special by the cir- 
cumstance, that they have no organs specially adapted for 
the production of their sensations. Their organs are 
simply the organs of the body in general, in which the 
ramifications of the nerve-fibres are distributed. These 
organs are primarily adapted to the lower functions of 
animal life ; but in subserving these functions they give 
rise to the higher function of sensation, and thereby 
become organs of setise. In consequence of this the 
classification of general sensations is beset by a difficulty 
which is scarcely felt in the case of special sensations. 
It is true, as was shown above in several instances, the 
unscientific consciousness occasionally confounds the 
sensations of different special senses; but, as a rule, 
these sensations can be readily distinguished and referred 
to the organs, from the affections of which they arise. 
It is not so, however, with the general sensations. 
They are often so obscure in their nature, that they can 
neither be clearly distinguished in consciousness, nor 
precisely localised in the organism. This, in fact, is no 
slight cause of the difficulty a physician experiences in 

* Chapter i. f § i. 



The General Senses. 63 

forming a satisfactory diagnosis of a disease. The 
sensations of disease are connected mainly with the 
general sensibility. The patient commonly feels but a 
vague uneasiness, which he is unable to describe or 
localise ; and fortunate will it be, if he does not mislead 
his medical adviser by an illusory description of its 
nature and locality. In consequence of the characteristic 
vagueness of these sensations it will be found that they 
possess in general comparatively little value as sources of 
knowledge ; it is as sources of feeling — of our pleasures 
and pains — that they are most obtrusive in consciousness. 
In the absence of that clear definition which is 
necessary to a scientific classification of the general 
sensations, we must perhaps content ourselves with a 
provisional enumeration of their principal varieties. But 
even in such an enumeration we must be guided by the 
principle which governs the classification of the special 
sensations, — we must follow the distinction of the bodily 
organs, keeping in view at the same time the conscious 
distinction of the sensations excited. For the purpose 
of reducing to some sort of order the complex variety of 
phenomena to be enumerated, it may be convenient to 
separate them into two groups. For some of the general 
sensations approach more nearly the character of special 
sensations, inasmuch as they arise from the action of a 
particular organ or set of organs. Such, for example, 
are the muscular and the alimentary sensations, which are 
excited respectively by the action of the muscles and of 
the alimentary canal. Others, again, like the sense of 
temperature, instead of being limited to a single organ, 
are distributed more or less over the whole sentient 
organism ; and these may, with some propriety, be 
regarded as general sensations in the most restricted 
meaning of the term. 



64 Psychology. 

§ i.— General Sensations connected with one Organ. 

Of this class the feelings derived from the exercise of 
the muscles are, in many respects, by far the most 
important ; the muscular sense may, in fact, claim the 
rank of a sixth special sense. We shall accordingly treat 
it with the same detail as the special senses. 

i. — The Muscular Sense. 

In earlier times this form of sensibility was usually 
confounded with touch. It is true that, as far back as 
the seventeenth century,* some writers had recognised 
the fact that certain feelings, such as weight, commonly 
ascribed to touch, must be due to a totally different 
sense ; yet it was not till a comparatively recent date, 
that the distinction of muscular sensibility was generally 
accepted in psychology. 

Even at the present day there is considerable variation 
of opinion among physiologists as to the precise nature 
of the organic process in muscular feeling. The various 
opinions on the subject may be conveniently ranged 
under three heads. There are those who find, in the 
nerve-fibres that are imbedded among the muscular 
tissues, a special apparatus of sensation, affording a suffi- 
cient physiological explanation of the feelings of muscular 
exertion. Others, again, refuse to ascribe any indepen- 
dent sensibility to the muscles; and they explain the 
feelings excited by muscular action as being due either 

* A history of the discovery of this sense is given in a learned 
and interesting note by Sir William Hamilton, in his edition of 
Reid's Works, p. 867. For more recent doctrines on the subject, 
see Wundt's Physiologische Psychology, vol. i., pp. 376-8 (2nd ed.), 
and an article on The Muscular Perception of Space, by G. Stanley 
Hall, in Mind for October, 1878. 



The General Senses. 65 

to a peripheral cause, such as the resulting movement of 
the skin and adjacent tissues, or to a central stimulus, — 
the stimulus of the brain implied in volitional effort. 
Perhaps a complete physiological explanation will accept 
something from each of these theories. By this mode of 
reconciling the divergent opinions, a distinct organ of 
sensibility is recognised in the structure of the muscles, 
while it is admitted, as it may be in the case of all the 
senses, that sensations excited by this organ may be as- 
sociated with other sensations excited at the same time, 
and that the resulting consciousness may be a fusion of 
various co-existent sensations. But the psychology of 
muscular sensibility is not called to decide between rival 
physiological theories on the subject ; it postulates as its 
data merely certain distinguishable forms of sensation 
connected with the action of the muscles. 

(A) The special organ, then, of the muscular sense is 
the muscular tissues. These are, both in an anatomical 
and in a psychological point of view, of two kinds. In 
anatomical structure, some are distinguished by minute 
transverse bars or stripes, for which they are said to be 
striped, while others are called the u?istriped muscles 
owing to the absence of this feature. Again, some 
muscles are under the control of the will, and are there- 
fore named voluntary, while others are distinguished as 
involuntary in consequence of their being beyond the 
will's control. Now, the voluntary muscles are all striped, 
and the unstriped are all involuntary ; but a few involun- 
tary muscles, such as those of the heart, are striped. 

It is the voluntary muscles that form the organ of 
muscular sensation proper. These muscles are supplied 
both with afferent and with efferent nerves, so that in 
their structure they exhibit all the features necessary to 
an organ of sense. 

£ 



66 Psychology. 

(B) In regard to the agency by which the muscular 
sense is excited, it differs from the special senses in their 
normal action. We have seen that these senses are 
usually stimulated by forces external to the organism ; in 
the case of the muscles, it is their own specific action 
that produces their sensations. The function, to which 
the muscles are specially adapted, is the production of 
motion ; and this they produce by the peculiar property 
with which they are endowed. This property is called 
their contractility. It is a peculiar power of shortening 
their tissues, so as to pull those parts of the organism to 
which they are attached. 

(C) Muscular sensations, properly so called, are there- 
fore the sensations excited during the peculiar action of 
the muscles ; and the term is not to be understood as 
including sensations excited by any condition of muscular 
tissue besides its contraction. In this restricted sense, 
the muscular sensations are divisible into two classes, 
comprehending respectively the sensations of simple 
tension and those of motion. 

I. The former class includes all the feelings excited 
by a muscular strain that does not pass into living move- 
ment, — a " dead strain," as it is called. Such feelings 
are experienced when supporting the body, especially in 
an upright posture. Other examples are found in the 
support of an external weight, or in the effort of merely 
resisting any force, as well as in the push against an 
insuperable obstacle. 

II. The second class comprehends the sensations ex- 
cited by a muscular effort which results in movement. 
The only marked difference among this class of sensa- 
tions is founded on the varying rapidity of the motion 
produced. The sensations of rapid movement are more 
exciting, while those of slow movement belong to the 



The General Senses. 6y 

calmer type. For this reason, as will afterwards appear, 
the latter class afford more valuable materials for know- 
ledge ; and the same may be said regarding the 
sensations of a dead strain. The sensations of rapid 
movement, on the other hand, are more powerful 
stimulants of feeling, — of our pleasures and pains. 

It remains to be added, that in our mental develop- 
ment the muscular sense is of value, not merely in itself, 
but also as an aid to the other senses. This has been 
already noticed incidentally ; but in the analysis of our 
perceptions it will appear more clearly that, not only in 
touching, but also in tasting and smelling, in seeing and 
hearing, the acuteness of perception is largely increased 
by muscular activity and sensibility. And it will thus 
be seen that, as was observed before, the body is the 
organ of the soul, not simply as the passive recipient of 
external impressions, but also in virtue of its active 
power. 

Muscular exertion stimulates respiration ; and there- 
fore muscular sensations, especially of the intenser sort, 
are apt to be mingled with the sensations of the next 
class. 

ii. — The Pulmonary Sensibility. 

This class comprehends those sensations which may 
be called pulmonary, inasmuch as they are connected 
with the action of the lungs. They have been already 
noticed as mingling with olfactory sensations in what are 
known as fresh and close smells. The lungs do not 
obtrude their normal action into consciousness ; but 
more or less distinct sensation is excited by any marked 
variation in their action, arising from any unusual 
stimulant or impediment. Thus we feel the influence of 
any cause which, by increasing the supply of oxygen to 



68 Psychology. 

the lungs, stimulates the respiration. This is one of the 
effects experienced from the fall of the thermometer; and 
it is partly in consequence of this, that the breathing of 
cool air is felt to be " bracing," though the effect of cold 
on all the bodily tissues must not be overlooked in 
explaining the general feeling of exhilaration described 
by this term. A similar stimulation is felt in facing a 
breeze, in passing from a confined atmosphere to the 
open air, or in brisk muscular exercise. These sensa- 
tions, however, cannot, from their very nature, be limited 
to the lungs. The accelerated oxidation of the blood, 
with which they are associated, stimulates all the vital 
processes, and produces, in consequence, a feeling of 
intensified vitality throughout the whole animal system 

" O there is sweetness in the mountain air, 
And life which bloated ease may never hope to share 1" 

On the other hand, any impediment to the healthy 
action of the lungs produces a feeling of depression, 
which diffuses itself rapidly over all the functions of life. 
This feeling may vary in all degrees from the compara- 
tively mild torpor induced by breathing a somewhat 
vitiated atmosphere up to the terrible agony of suffocation. 

iii. — The Alimentary Sensibility. 

Another group of sensations to be noticed in this 
section are those connected with the alimentary canal. 
There is a great variety among these sensations, 
corresponding, partly, to the different regions of their 
organ, partly to the different stages in the process of 
digestion, which is its function. Connected with the 
earliest stages of this process, the mastication and 
salivation of food in the mouth, as well as its solution 
under the action of the gastric juice in the stomach, there 



The General Senses. 6g 

are those pleasant sensations of relish, and those un- 
pleasant sensations of nausea or disgust, which have 
been already referred to as being sometimes confounded 
with tastes and smells. During the unimpeded perfor- 
mance of its functions the alimentary canal does not 
obtrude itself upon consciousness in the form of any 
definite sensation. Healthy digestion is, indeed, accom- 
panied with a feeling of comfort, extremely luxurious 
though vague ; but this feeling is evidently diffused so 
extensively over the whole animal system, that it cannot 
be regarded as a sensation of the alimentary canal 
exclusively, though this organ may be its primary source. 
On the other hand, indigestion gives rise to a great 
variety of disagreeable sensations, deriving their various 
characters from the nature of the interruptions from 
which they proceed, but seldom ; except in milder cases, 
confining themselves to the alimentary canal. Moreover, 
when the food has been digested and absorbed, the want 
of a new supply produces the familiar sensations of 
hunger. But this sensation also, though, in its earlier 
stages, definitely localised in the stomach, tends, when 
prolonged, to spread into a dreadful state of general 
suffering that obliterates the sense of its original source. 

iv. — The Sensibility of Other Organ t. 

It must not be forgotten that the remaining organs of 
the body, such as the bones, the ligaments, the arteries 
and veins, are sensitive \ but the sensations, of which 
they are the source, are either so completely fused with 
concomitant sensations of other organs that they cannot 
be distinctly defined, or their sensations are essentially 
similar to those which may be experienced in all the 
organs of the body, and are therefore referred to the next 
section. The only exception is the sensations derived 



70 Psycliology. 

from the distinctive organs of the sexes ; and these sen- 
sations, if they admitted of a detailed treatment, might 
be shown to form a very important factor in the upbuild- 
ing of the human mind. 

§ 2. — General Sensations, not limited to Particular 
Organs. 

The sensations belonging to this section have already 
been described as peculiarly deserving to be styled gen- 
eral sensations. Besides the fact that they cannot be 
defined by their association with separate organs — per- 
haps in consequence of this fact — they possess, in a 
high degree, that characteristic vagueness which con- 
trasts most of the general sensations with the special. 
This renders it impossible, in the present state of psy- 
chology, to attempt anything like an exact or exhaustive 
classification of these sensations. 

I. The most obtrusive in our daily consciousness ap- 
pear to be the sensations of temperature. Animal tis- 
sues, like all other bodies, are subject to the expansion 
and contraction which result from the rise and fall of 
temperature ; and it has been supposed that this action 
on the nervous tissues affords a sufficient physio- 
logical explanation of the feelings of heat and cold, 
though some physiologists have held that the sensi- 
bility is due to a special set of netves.* Whether 
the sensibility to temperature be, as this theory sup- 
poses, a special sense or not, it certainly is not limited 
to any single part of the organism. The feeling of 

•Recent investigations seem to show that this sensibility is dis- 
tributed sporadically over the skin, different spots being sensitive 
to heat and cold. See On the Temper ature-Sense, by Dr. H. II. 
Donaldson, in Mind for July 1885. 



The General Senses. j\ 

heat or cold may, indeed, for the moment be localised 
in some particular region of the body ; but it may 
equally well, at another time, be confined to a different 
region, or diffused generally throughout every part, 
internal and external. As the sense of temperature 
must be affected mainly by the temperature of the 
environment, it is probably the skin, either in general 
or at some definite part, that is most frequently the 
seat of warmth or chill. But these sensations, though 
thus associated with the organ of touch, must not on 
that account be considered tactile ; for not only are the 
two kinds of sensation wholly distinct in character, but 
the parts which are most sensitive 'to touch are not pro- 
portionally sensitive to temperature. In connection 
with the relation of touch to the sense of temperature, a 
somewhat interesting fact may be mentioned. Suppose 
a part of the skin endowed with an acute sense of touch 
is brought into contact with a part comparatively obtuse, 
then, unless an effort of attention interfere, the acute 
part feels most prominently the touch of the obtuse, 
while the latter feels most prominently the temperature 
of the other. If the brow, for example, is feverishly hot, 
and the hand chilled, it is pleasant to feel on the brow 
the coolness of the hand, which does not so perceptibly 
realise the temperature of the brow. So, too, the 
warmed hand is often applied to the face, when suffering 
from any neuralgic affection which is relieved by heat. 

II. Another very extensive group of sensations may 
be described somewhat indefinitely as due to abnormal 
or, at least, unusual conditions of the various bodily 
tissues. 

i. Diseases and injuries may be mentioned first among 
these abnormal conditions. Some organs, like the bones 
and ligaments, never affect our consciousness, except 



72 Psychology. 

under such unusual influences as a rupture, a fracture, 
or some kind of internal decay. The muscles, also, are 
the seat of many painful sensations in cases of laceration, 
bruising, or cramp. The condition of nerve-tissue, in 
health, can scarcely be said to appear in consciousness, 
except, perhaps, in a vague sense of general well-being ; 
but one of the most unendurable forms of acute pain is 
that which arises from a diseased state of some nerve, 
and which is therefore appropriately described by the 
name of neuralgia (nerve-ache). 

Perhaps the sensations of fatigue ought to be in- 
cluded among those arising from an injured condition 
of bodily tissue ; for these sensations become obtrusive 
in consciousness only when the limit of health is being 
transgressed in the action of any organ. These sensa- 
tions may, indeed, in earlier stages, assume the form of 
a mild lassitude, which is just sufficient to give a zest to 
repose ; but even then they are to be taken as a warning, 
that the action of the fatigued organ cannot be con- 
tinued with impunity. It is the sensations arising from 
excessive and irksome muscular toil, that fill the cup of 
daily misery in the life of the overwrought poor. But 
probably the most intolerable sensations of weariness 
are those which have their origin in the excessive waste 
of nerve-tissue produced by prolonged periods of sleep- 
lessness, of intense emotional excitement, of severe 
intellectual labour, or — what is still worse — of all these 
combined. 

2. The abnormal conditions of animal tissue, which 
are thus found to be the source of sensation, may be 
produced by the application of various substances. 
Powerful irritants, like peppers, acids, ammonia, or 
alcohol, have been already referred to as setting up an 
inflammatory action on the skin and other parts of the 



The General Senses. 73 

body. But the various substances, designated as 
poisons, are those which play the strangest freaks with 
human sensibility, apparently by their action on the 
nerve-tissues. The term intoxication, if its original 
meaning be kept in view, might be used to describe the 
sensations arising from the action of poisons. But the 
term commonly implies, what must be obvious to every 
observer, that the influence of these substances extends 
at once to the highest nerve-centres, resulting often in 
the most startling effects upon intellect and emotion. 
It seems impossible, therefore, to eliminate these pheno- 
mena of intellectual and emotional elevation or depres- 
sion, arising from the stimulating or narcotic action of 
poisons, so as to define their effect on the mere sensibility. 
3. Among the influences originating unusual con- 
ditions of nervous tissue, electricity and magnetism 
demand a place. The artificial application of electricity 
produces a well-marked kind of feeling, the spark from a 
Leyden jar startling the subject of the experiment with 
an acute shock, while the Voltaic current pours a con- 
tinuous thrill of wrenching sensations. On the other 
hand, the influence of the natural electricity on the 
nervous system is by no means so well marked. It 
appears only when there are considerable disturbances in 
the electrical state of the atmosphere, or in the earth's 
magnetism, as during thunderstorms or earthquakes. It 
is also limited to very vague effects in consciousness, with 
which probably psychical processes of an intellectual or 
emotional kind are intermingled. Moreover, these 
effects appear to depend largely on individual peculiari- 
ties of nervous temperament : in some persons they take 
the form of an inexplicable elevation, in others that of 
an equally inexplicable depression. In a cold dry 
climate like that of the Canadian winter, where animal 



74 Psychology. 

electricity is sometimes developed with extraordinary 
power, there appear to be no definite electrical sensations 
experienced, except when a spark is drawn by the touch 
of a conductor. 

Since the time of Mesmer and Von Reichenbach the 
influence of animal electricity and magnetism has often 
been connected with some of the strangest phenomena 
in the psychical life of man ; but the attempt to establish 
this connection raises a problem which can be con- 
veniently discussed only at a later stage. 



The Mental Processes. 7$ 



PART II 



THE MENTAL PROCESSES. 

THE phenomena of mind resemble the phenomena of 
matter in the fact, that ordinarily they are of a 
complex character. The elementary constituents of 
mental phenomena, described in the previous Part of 
this Book, are not found in distinct isolation in our 
ordinary consciousness ; they are separated only by 
scientific abstraction, — by analysis. The combination of 
these elements into co-existent groups or consecutive 
series, however capricious it may seem to a careless 
observer, is found, on more accurate inquiry, to be due 
to certain determinate processes which are governed by 
invariable laws. These processes are Association and 
Comparison. They form the subject of this Part 



j6 Psychology. 



CHAPTER I. 



ASSOCIATION. 

TO understand this process it must be observed that 
the elements of mind may not only make their ap- 
pearance in consciousness, under the conditions explained 
in the previous Part, but may re-appear any time after, 
generally in a fainter degree, when these conditions no 
longer exist. Such a re-appearance of any mental state 
is appropriately named a representation) while its original 
appearance in consciousness is called & presentation* A 
former state of mind is thus represented in consciousness 
in consequence of a certain relation existing between it 
and the mental state immediately preceding the re- 
presentation. This relation is technically named an 
association. The act, by which the preceding mental 
state evokes a representation, is called, in technical as 
well as in ordinary language, suggestion. The conditions 
under which this act is performed, are therefore called 
the Laws of Suggestion ; but, as suggestion is founded 
on an association between the suggesting and the 

* This revival of former presentations implies of course that they 
have not been altogether lost, that they have been retained in some 
way as a possession of the mind. In the present state of science 
such retention must be accepted simply as a fact, though various 
hypotheses have been proposed to account for it 



Association. 77 

suggested states of mind, these laws are sometimes 
named also the Laws of Association. Of these laws 
some are distinguished as ptimary, others as secondary. 
The difference between these will be more easily com- 
prehended after the explanation of the former class. 

§ 1. — Primary Laws of Suggestion, 

In their highest generalisation these laws are reducible 

to two. 

I. The Law of Similarity or of Direct Remembrance : — 
States of mind, identical in nature, though differing 
in the time of their occurrence, are capable of 
suggesting each other. 

[I. The Law of Contiguity or of Indirect Remembrance : 
— States of mind, though differing in nature, if 
identical in the time of their occurrence, are capable 
of suggesting each other. 

These two laws evidently comprehend all possible 
cases of suggestion, as they apply both to phenomena 
which are identical and to those which are different in 
nature. The first law requires in order to the possibility 
of suggestion, that there be a natural resemblance 
between the suggesting and the suggested states of mind. 
Thus, when I hear a sound which I recognise as the 
voice of a friend, the recognition implies that the sound 
of the present moment suggests to me the sound of the 
voice heard before. Now, the two sounds are similar in 
their nature ; they differ merely in the time of their occur- 
rence, the one being heard now, the other having been 
heard on some previous occasion. The two sounds there- 
fore, fulfil the conditions of the first law. But the act of 
which we are speaking, the recognition of a sound as being 



78 Psychology, 

a friend's voice, implies something more. Not only does 
the present recall the former sound, but it recalls also 
the friend's appearance, with which that sound is associ- 
ated. Now, there is no natural resemblance between a 
man's visual appearance and the sound of his voice; but 
the two have, by hypothesis, been in the mind at the 
same time. They, therefore, fulfil the conditions of the 
law of contiguity, and the one is thereby capable of sug- 
gesting the other. 

Such is the general purport of the primary laws of sug- 
gestion. The nomenclature, by which they are distin- 
guished, can scarcely be said to be determined among 
psychologists. The names Similarity and Contiguity are 
those adopted, perhaps most commonly, in English psy- 
chological literature. The other names, Direct and In- 
direct Remembrance, were given to the laws by Sir 
William Hamilton.* Perhaps they were suggested by 
the expressions immediate and mediate Reproduction, 
used by Herbart. t But whatever their origin, their sig- 
nificance, which will appear in subsequent expositions, 
has been unfortunately overlooked by English psycholo- 
logists. The phrase, intrinsic a?id extrinsic association, % 
might be introduced very appropriately to distinguish 
associations founded on an intrinsic resemblance of mental 



* See his dissertation appended to ReiiVs Works (Note D. * * *, 
pp. 912-3). It is a matter of regret that this dissertation was never 
finished by its author, and that his theory of suggestion was there- 
fore never brought into complete shape. 

t Unmittelbare und Mittelbare Reproduction ( IVerke, Vol. v., 
pp. 24-5). These terms are used also by Lotze (Mikrokosmus, Vol. 
i. , p. 236 ; and Grundziige der Psychologic p. 22). 

% Thus I would translate Wundt's innere und aus sere Association 
{Physiologische Psychologic, Vol. ii., p. 300, 2nd ed.). 



Association. 79 

states from those which imply merely the extrinsic acci- 
dent of simultaneous occurrence in consciousness. 

Although the general drift of these laws may be indi- 
cated by the above explanation, yet the full bearing of 
their influence in the processes of mind requires a more 
detailed exposition. Such an exposition may be conveni- 
ently given in connection with certain forms of sugges- 
tion, which were supposed by old psychologists to be in- 
dependent laws, but which may be shown to be merely 
resultants of the two more general laws under considera- 
tion. 

i. — Suggestion by Local Association. 

To the ordinary observer of what is passing in his 
mind, there is perhaps nothing more obvious than the 
fact that things are apt to suggest one another, if they 
have been associated in place ; and therefore this mode 
of suggestion was noticed even by the earliest inquirers.- 
Arnong the multitude of phenomena illustrative of" this 
principle there are two which possess a special interest. 

I. Local Association is the link by which mental 
states seem to be most easily connected, and by which 
therefore they suggest each other with the greatest readi- 
ness. The reason of this will be considered again. 
Here it may be observed that the great mass of the 
knowledge, which we acquire naturally, is given through 
the senses, especially through the sense of sight, and 
the idea which we form of an object is, wherever possible, 
a visual image. Consequently, it is natural that the 
easiest transition between mental states should occur 
when they have such a local relation as to form parts of 
one visual picture. 

On this account local association forms a predominant 
power of suggestion in minds that have not been 



80 Psychology. 

disciplined to methodical habits of thinking ;* and even 
in men of cultured intelligence the train of thought is 
directed along this line, when mental discipline is 
relaxed under the indolence of reverie, or the general 
decay of old age. Then a simple story cannot be told 
without introducing a number of circumstances, which 
have only a local connection with it, and by which, 
accordingly, its point is often concealed, and its interest 
flags. It has been mentioned as an indication of the 
genius of Shakespeare, that he guides the talk of 
uneducated characters along the track of local associa- 
tions. "Thou didst swear to me," says the Hostess in 
Henry tJie Fourth? upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in 
my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal 
fne, on Wednesday, in Whitsun' week, when the Prince 
broke thy head," etc. 

In consequence of the readiness with which thoughts 
are suggested by local association, it has been made the 
basis of many systems and artifices for aiding the memory. 
Mnemonic systems of various plans have been invented 
since the time of Simonides, in the sixth century B.C. ; 
but their ingenuity has generally been too artificial to 
render them of much service. Still there are several 
simple expedients by which local contiguity maybe used 
to make recollection easier. Of these the most familiar 
and the most useful are tabular views and genealogical 
trees. Thus an elaborate classification, which could be 
mastered only with great labour and, perhaps, uncertainty, 
if we depended entirely on the relations of resemblance 



* Apparently associations of locality are strong also among some 
of the lower animals, at least in the domestic state, such as the 
horse, the dog, and the carrier-pigeon. 

t Part ii., Act iL, Scene I. 



Association. 8 1 

or causality between its parts, may be committed to 
memory with comparative ease by arranging them in a 
tabular view, that is, by placing them in local association 
with one another.* 

II. Another fact to be observed in connection with 
this power of suggestion is, that a place may recall, not 
only another place or a material object in its neighbour- 
hood, but also any thought or emotion which has been 
experienced there. It is by such associations that 
localities come to wield such an influence over the feel- 
ings and the actions of men. In all settled communities 
the power of " home," especially over the inner life ot 
individuals, has become a familiar theme for literature. 
But an influence of wider sweep is acquired by places that 
have become associated with the lives of great men or 
with great events in the history of the world. It 



* The recognition of this fact has been common among writers of 
all times. " When things to be remembered are so placed, that 
the relation of contiguity concurs with those of similitude, cause 
and effect, in leading the memory from one to another, the task of 
recollection may be performed with proportional ease " (Ferguson's 
Principles of Moral and Political Science, Parti., Chapter ii., §6). 
" Quicquid deducat Intellectuale ad feriendum Sensum (quae 
ratio etiam praecipue viget in artificiali memoria) juvat Me- 
moriam" (Bacon, Novum 0?'ganon, ii., 26). " Vidit hoc 
prudenter, sive Simonides, sive alius quis invenit, ea maxime 
animis effingi nostris, quae essent a sensu tradita atque im- 
pressa ; acerrirnum autem ex omnibus nostris sensibus esse sensum 
videndi ; quare facillime animo teneri posse ea, quae perciperentur 
auribus aut cogitatione, si etiam oculorum commendatione animis 
traderentur" (Cicero, De Oratore, ii., 87). This discovery, thus 
ascribed doubtfully to Simonides, is connected in tradition with a 
well-known beautiful myth in the poet's life. See also Quinctilian, 
De Orat. Inst., xi., 2, where detailed illustrations are given of the 
' ' topical memory " based on local association. 

F 



82 Psychology. 

is an often-quoted saying of Johnson's, that "that 
man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not 
gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety 
would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." * It 
is this that forms to Americans the charm of travel in the 
Old World. It is thus that the church or temple, — the 
building or locality, — set apart for worship, becomes 
associated in the devout mind with the purest thoughts 
and the highest aspirations of his life, so that it grows 
suggestive to him of a sacredness which can be at best 
but clumsily symbolised in any ritual of consecration. 
Any locality, which has taken a position in the history of 
a good man, becomes powerful to stimulate aspirations 
after the saintliness of his life; and this imparts its 
religious significance and justification to the practice of 
making pilgrimages to the shrines of saints. The great 
series of events, known by the name of the Crusades, in 
which the conflict of Christendom and Islam found its 
most vivid and enthusiastic expression, forms a striking 
example of the part which local associations have played 
in directing even the grander movements of the world's 
hihtory. 

Such are a few illustrations of this suggestive force : it 
remains for us now to analyse it into the two more 
general laws of Direct and Indirect Remembrance. In 
order to do this it must be observed that, in all 
cases of suggestion by local contiguity, there must 
have been a cognition, whether a presentation or 
representation, of some locality, and co-existing with 
it in consciousness, there must have been either 
a cognition of something in the neighbourhood, 01 



* Journey to the Hebrides. 



Association. 83 

some thought or emotion, or other state of mind. 
These mental states, having been contemporaneous with 
the cognition of the locality, fulfil thus the conditions 
upon which the law of Indirect Remembrance depends : 
however different in nature they may be from the 
cognition of the locality, they do not differ from it in the 
time of their occurrence. Now, when the locality ; s 
subsequently presented or represented, this subsequent 
cognition is identical in nature with the previous 
cognition, differing from it only in the time of its occur- 
rence, so that the later cognition suggests the earlier by 
the hw of Direct Remembrance. 

The combined operation of the two laws may be 
illustrated by the following diagram, in which P 1 
symbolises an earlier cognition of any place, P 2 a sub- 
sequent cognition of the same ; while AS is a symbol for 
mental states associated with the former cognition, and 
the arrows point in the line of suggestion. The diagram 

Law of Contiguity. 
Pl ^ ^ AS 



Pa 



also illustrates the fact, that the Law of Similarity is the 
fundamental principle of suggestion, inasmuch as mental 
states are recalled by it directly or immediately, but 
only indirectly or mediately by the Law of Contiguity. 



84 Psychology. 

ii. — Suggestion by Resemblance. 

This force of suggestion is scarcely less obvious than 
the preceding, and has therefore been long familiar to 
students of the mental processes. It is not, however, so 
readily suggestive as local associations, and, accordingly, 
is not so characteristic of vulgar minds. On the contrary, 
its presence, as a powerful and frequent energy in 
determining the course of thought, is one of the most 
obvious evidences of intellectual culture. The more 
cultivated intellects may be roughly distinguished into 
two groups as the scientific or philosophical, and the 
poetical or artistic ; in both an essential factor of their 
superiority is the prominent part that is played by 
suggestions based on resemblance. It is by this power 
that the scientific mind ascends to ever higher generalisa- 
tions, for a new generalisation is a connection of pheno- 
mena by resemblances which had not operated as links 
of suggestion before. It is by the same power that the 
poetic imagination embodies the abstract in the concrete, 
the spiritual in the material. When Newton, according 
to the familiar story, saw in the fall of an apple a 
manifestation of the force by which the planets are kept 
in their orbits round the sun, a resemblance, previously 
undiscovered, between terrestrial and celestial motions 
suggested itself to his mind. So when Troilus describes 
the relation of a lover to the object of his passion as being 
like that of " earth to the centre," when Cressida more 
explicitly asserts that — 

" The strong base and building of my love 
Is as the very centre of the earth, 
Drawing all things to it,"* 

•Troilus and Cressida, Act iv., Sc z. 



Association. 85 

we have a fine expression of the close approximation 
between the scientific classification of similar processes 
and the poetical illustration of the spiritual by the 
material, of obscure phenomena by those that may be 
clearly pictured to the imagination. 

But it is not in minds of the higher order alone that 
resemblance is suggestive. It is this that enables the 
ordinary mind to perform such a common act as the 
recognition of a portrait by its resemblance to the 
person portrayed. But, in fact, without this power of 
suggestion even the simplest acts of intelligence would 
be impossible. When, for example, in any dish at table, 
I perceive a peculiar flavour, like that of peach or lemon 
or strawberry, the perception implies that some previous 
taste of the same nature is suggested to my mind, and 
recognised as being identical with the taste at present 
experienced. 

To see that this suggestive force results from the two 
general laws, it must be observed that resemblance 
implies, not absolute identity, but merely identity in 
some feature or features, along with any degree of 
difference in others. Thus the resemblance, on the 
ground of which quadrupeds are classed in one group, is 
founded merely on the one feature of four-footedness, 
while it admits all such variations, in size and other 
properties, as, for example, between the elephant and the 
mouse. Now, the cognition of four-footedness in the 
elephant, and the cognition of the same attribute in the 
mouse or any other quadruped, are mental acts identical 
in their nature, though differing in the time of their 
occurrence ; and they fulfil, therefore, the conditions ot 
the Law of Similarity. But this cognition co-existed, in 
the one case, with the cognition of the dibtinctive 
properties of the elephant, in the other, with the cogni- 



86 Psychology. 

tion of the distinctive properties of the mouse or some 
other quadruped, fulfilling thus the conditions of the Law 
of Contiguity. We can, therefore, understand why the 
cognition of four-footedness in one case should suggest, 
(i) by the Law of Similarity, some previous cognition of 
the same attribute, (2), by the Law of Contiguity, the 
associated cognition of the other attributes. 



iii. — Suggestion by Contrast. 

The suggestion of one contrasted object by another 
has struck all observers. The sketches of the mental 
life of man in general literature often imply a tendency 
in present happiness to recall former suffering. 

44 Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit." * 

Present misery seems likewise suggestive of joys that 
are past : — 

44 There is no greater sorrow 

Than to be mindful of the happy time 
In misery." f 

A very slight attention to the course of private medita- 
tions or of social talk will soon disclose numerous 
instances in which one subject suggests another by way 



* Aeneid, i., 203. Compare King Richard ii., Act iii., Sc. 4 : — 

44 — Joy, being altogether wanting, 
It doth remember me the more of sorrow." 

f Dante's Inferno, v., 12 1-3 (Longfellow's Translation). Com- 
pare Tennyson's Locksley Hall : — 
44 This is truth the poet sings, 

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things." 



Association, Sy 

of contrast ; so that the thoughts run readily between 
such opposites as heat and cold, joy and sorrow, great- 
ness and littleness, virtue and vice. It may be added 
that the advance of culture tends to give increasing 
power to this principle of suggestion in directing the cur- 
rent of a man's thoughts. For accurate thinking requires, 
not only that objects be identified with those which they 
resemble, but often also that they be clearly distinguished 
from those which are different. Accordingly, the culti- 
vation of scientific habits tends to make objects sugges- 
tive of others with which they stand in contrast. 

This law of suggestion had, therefore, attracted atten- 
tion among psychologists, so long ago at least as the 
time of Aristotle, and it seems, by him as well as by 
some later writers, to have been considered a special 
pow r er, incapable of being resolved into any other. Some 
modern psychologists, indeed, seem to have thought that, 
in respect of association by the two opposite principles 
of resemblance and contrast, the world of mind affords 
a parallel to the world of matter, in which there are the 
two antagonistic forces of attraction and repulsion. But 
it is unnecessary to postulate any such independent 
power, if it can be shown to be merely another resultant 
of the two laws of Similarity and Contiguity. 

To explain this analysis it must be observed that, as 
resemblance implies some contrast, so contrast implies 
some resemblance. Two things cannot be contrasted, 
except in reference to some common feature, in which 
they exhibit opposite extremes. Giant and dwarf, for 
example, occupy the extremes of excess and defect in the 
common property of stature, virtue and vice are the 
opposite extremes of moral character, heat and cold the 
opposite extremes of temperature. But there is no con- 
trast between giant and virtue, between vice and cold. 



88 Psychology. 

This is the fact which the logicians express in the 
doctrine, that there is no logical opposition between 
propositions, unless they have the same subject and the 
same predicate. Suggestion by contrast is, therefore, 
capable of explanation in the same way as suggestion by 
resemblance. The cognition of the common property, 
on which the contrast is based, in one extreme, and the 
cognition of it in the other, are mutually suggestive by 
the Law of Similarity, while the distinctive characteristics 
of each extreme are suggestible by the law of Contiguity. 

iv. — Suggestion by Relativity. 

The relation of cause and effect is often referred to 
as forming a bond of connection between our thoughts ; 
but other relations, such as those of parent and child, 
teacher and pupil, author and production, are also 
operative in the same way. Yet before a relative can 
suggest its correlate, the two must have been previously 
known to be mutually related. Now, to say that the 
mutual relation of the two must have been previously 
known, implies that they must have been in our 
consciousness at the same time, and have thereby fulfilled 
the conditions of the Law of Contiguity. Accordingly, 
when any relative term occurs to the mind a second or 
subsequent time, it may, by the Law of Similarity, recall 
its previous appearance in consciousness, and this, by the 
Law of Contiguity, will recall the correlate with which 
it was associated. 

§ 2. — Secondary Laws of Suggestion, 

There are some phenomena of suggestion which are 
inexplicable by the primary laws alone, which therefore 
imply the operation of another set of laws, These 



Association. 89 

phenomena are connected with the complex character of 
the mental states which make up the course of our 
conscious life. For that course is not to be conceived as 
a thread on which one solitary state of ccnsciousness is 
strung after another, — as a chain formed of successive 
links. On the contrary, our conscious life is a complex 
series of successive clusters of mental states, in which the 
members of each cluster hold more or less complicated 
relations with one another, as well as with the members 
of the immediately contiguous clusters. In this fact there 
are involved two problems connected with suggestion. 

1. Among the mental states which compose the 
consciousness of each moment, any one may suggest, or 
several may combine in suggesting, the mental states of 
the next moment. Now, since all the mental states of 
the present do not operate equally in suggesting those 
that immediately follow, the question arises, what is it 
that makes some of them more suggestive than the rest ? 

2. But of the states which form the consciousness at 
any moment each is capable of suggesting, not merely 
one other state, but usually a number, often a large 
number, of other states. It is impossible, for example, 
to enumerate all the thoughts which might be suggested 
to the mind of an educated Englishman by the thought 
of Shakespeare. It might suggest any of his dramas, or 
any of the characters in these, or any of the other 
Elizabethan dramatists, or any of his editors or commen- 
tators, besides a multitude of other subjects. In like 
manner a vast range of subjects are associated in the 
minds of educated men with the name of any great 
author in the world's literature. But all such associated 
thoughts are never in any case actually suggested : on 
the contrary, as a rule, only one or a very few ever make 
their appearance in consciousness. What, then, determines 



90 Psychology. 

this selection of the thoughts that are actually suggested 
among a multitude that are capable of being suggested? 
These are the two problems which find their solution 
in the Secondary Laws of Suggestion. The Primary 
Laws describe the relations that are required to make 
one mental state capable of suggesting another. But 
they do not explain why it is that, when several states 
are capable of suggesting, and several capable of being 
suggested, some of them suggest, and some are suggested, 
more easily than others. The explanation of this is to 
be sought in the Secondary Laws ; and these may there- 
fore be described as the laws which determine the 
comparative suggestiveness and suggestibility of mental 
states. They may be brought under three heads, inas- 
much as they refer to suggestiveness, or to suggestibility, 
or to mutual suggestiveness and suggestibility. 

i. — Law of Suggestivttiess. 

States of mind are more suggestive in proportion to 
their intensity and to the number of them that com- 
bine in suggesting. 

This law consists of two parts. The first expresses the 
fact that, in the cluster of mental states composing our 
present consciousness, any one may, by superior intensity, 
become more powerful to suggest the thoughts of the 
next moment. The second part of the law implies, that 
a mental state of the present moment acquires more 
suggestive power, if its suggestions are aided by other 
present states. Each of these facts demands explanation. 

(A) The first part of the law is of incalculable 
importance in intellectual life. Without it all study 
would be impossible. M he mental attitude called study 
is the concentration of consciousness on some object to 



Association. 91 

the exclusion of others ; but this means the intensifica- 
tion of the thoughts relating to the object of study. 
Now, what is the purpose of intensifying these thoughts? 
It is evidently to make them more suggestive than any 
of the other mental states which unite with them to make 
up the entire consciousness of the moment. If any 
passing sound, or a stray glance, or the unceasing 
sensations of contact, or any transient emotion, were as 
powerfully suggestive as the thoughts in which we 
endeavour to absorb our consciousness, we should always 
be tormented by that distraction which we fortunately 
experience only at times, and the difference between 
consecutive and rambling thought would be abolished. 

The prolonged attitude of the mind called study is 
essentially identical with the briefer act of voluntary 
recollection. This act, as it involves volition, opens up, 
in its ultimate issues, the problem in regard to the nature 
of will; but this problem need not be discussed at 
present. Suffice it to recognise the fact, that there is a 
certain effort of the mind which we understand by 
volition, however that effort may be explained. When 
we wish to recall any object, such as a name, which does 
not suggest itself at once, we make such a voluntary 
effort. How do we succeed in restoring to consciousness 
the object sought ? 

In reproducing any previous thought we cannot of 
course violate the laws of suggestion, as in the product- 
ion of any physical result we cannot violate the laws of 
external nature. But the productions of art imply the 
direction of physical laws towards some human purpose ; 
and so the mental laws of suggestion may be directed by 
voluntary effort towards some end. We can concentrate 
our consciousness on any thought which is present ; and 
thus this thought will be rendered more suggestive in 



92 Psychology. 

virtue of the law we are now considering, so that every- 
thing associated with it will be more likely to be recalled. 
There may thus be brought up a whole cluster of thoughts 
related to that of which we are in search. In this way 
the second part of the present law may be brought into 
operation too ; a number of thoughts may simultaneously 
combine to direct our consciousness to the object 
wanted. For example, I see a face that I know well, 
but cannot fix on it a name. I make an effort of 
recollection. With all my efforts I must still wait till the 
name is suggested in accordance with the laws of associa- 
tion ; and, therefore, the utmost I can do is to direct the 
operation of these laws. Accordingly I concentrate my 
attention on the face, presented or represented. That 
will recall possibly the place where I saw it before, as 
well as other associated circumstances, till at last the 
desired name may turn up.* 

It may be added that, as facts locally associated must 
be made known by sensible impressions, and as these are 
commonly more vivid than mere abstractions of thought, 
the superior suggestiveness of local association is partially 
explained by the law under consideration. This law will 
be further illustrated in a subsequent chapter by the 
striking fact of the increased power which memory often 
acquires in dreams. 

(B) In illustrating the first part of this law an instance 



* It often happens, in the midst of study, that we strive to 
remember something in vain. In view of such failure, a useful 
practical suggestion is given by several writers. If the object 
sought does not readily recur to the mind, it is better not to waste 
the mental energy in prolonging a fruitless effort. A prosecution 
of the collateral study often leads to some link of suggestion, by 
which the desired object is spontaneously recalled. 



Association. 93 

has been incidentally noticed, in which the second part 
is also called into play. A further illustration of this part 
may be found by observing the difference in the effects 
produced by different portraits. One portrait is said to 
be a striking likeness, because it strikes or impresses the 
mind at once by its resemblance to the person portrayed. 
Another portrait is said to be & faint likeness, because it 
fails to show the same suggestive power. Now, what is 
the source of the difference in the suggestiveness of the 
two portraits ? In the case of a striking likeness all, or 
most, of the features in the portrait resemble the corres- 
ponding features in the person portrayed; and, conse- 
quently, the perceptions of all these features combine in 
suggesting the person. In the other case there is per- 
haps but a single feature in which there is any resem- 
blance between the portrait and the original, while even 
in that feature the resemblance may be imperfect : so 
that there is possibly but one perception capable of sug- 
gesting, and that with some hesitation, the person repre- 
sented. 

The same fact is further illustrated in the history of 
science. In so far as the progress of science consists in 
the widening of human generalisation, it may also be said 
to consist in the discovery of previously undetected 
resemblances among the phenomena of the universe. 
Now, all the more obvious resemblances, — the re- 
semblances which touch a considerable number of 
features, — were discovered in the earliest stages of 
scientific inquiry ; it is the subtler resemblances, — those 
which connect but a few features, or only one, — that are 
being revealed in modern times. 

ii. — Law of Suggestibility. 
States of mind are more suggestible in proportion to 



94 Psychology. 

(i) their recentness, (2) their previous intensity, and 
(3) the frequency of their previous recurrence.* 

The three qualities upon which, in this law, suggesti- 
bility depends, require to be separately considered. 

(A) Recentness* Few facts in the mental life of man 
are more familiar than the experience that impressions 
recently received are more readily revived than those 
received long ago. Every schoolboy knows that the 
lesson he learnt yesterday may be repeated easily to-day, 
but that he might tremble if called to repeat it a month 
hence. 

So certain is the law, that it is often applied in medical 
practice, in the treatment of patients suffering from 
mental anxiety. Such anxiety commonly arises from 
the mind being strained to excessive activity by certain 
thoughts and emotions connected with business or other 
cares of life ; and it becomes of the utmost importance 
for mental health that these thoughts and emotions 
should be excluded as much as possible from conscious- 
ness. This can be done only by diminishing their 
suggestibility ; and this effect, again, is most likely to be 
produced by occupying the mind with other subjects of 
a more suggestible character. Accordingly it is common 
to recommend a change of scene, so that the patient may 
receive novel impressions, which, on account of their 



* There might be an increased exactness gained by expressing 
this law in the form: — "Representations are more likely to be 
suggested in proportion to the recentness, the intensity, and the 
frequency of recurrence of the mental states of which they are 
representations." Yet it is scarcely necessary to be reminded that, 
in suggestion, it is not the prior state itself that is brought into 
existence again, but merely a representation of it. No serious con- 
fusion is likely to arise from speaking, in accordance with ordinary 
usage, of a former mental state being suggested or recalled. 



Association. 95 

superior recency, will be suggested more readily, and 
may ultimately supplant the old causes of anxiety. For 
this reason travel is generally more effective than 
residence in one place, since, by repeated change of 
scene, new scope is continually found for the operation 
of the law which renders mental impressions more 
suggestible in proportion to their recentness. 

" Haply the seas and countries different, 
With variable objects, shall expel 
This something settled matter in his heart, 
Whereon his brain's still beating puts him thus 
From fashion of himself."* 

There is an apparent exception to this law, which 
should not be overlooked. When the memory begins 
to fail in old age, its failure is observable chiefly in 
reference to recent impressions, while those of earlier 
life are recalled with comparative ease. So far as the 
psychologist has to do with this phenomenon, it must be 
viewed rather as an illustration of the second part of* the 
Law of Suggestibility than as a violation of the first. In 
childhood and youth and manhood the mind is un- 
doubtedly more impressible than in old age, and the 
impressions of those earlier times are accordingly 
characterised by greater intensity. It is, therefore, 
natural that they should be suggested more readily than 
the fainter impressions made upon decaying powers. 

(B) Intensity. We are now thus brought to consider 
the effect of this quality upon the suggestibility of mental 
states. Under the previous law we have seen that the 
more intensely a mental state absorbs consciousness, it 
becomes invested with a stronger suggestive power. 



* Hamlet, Act iii., Scene I. 



g6 Psychology. 

Many familiar facts may now be adduced to show that 
the greater intensity of a mental state makes it also more 
readily suggestible at any subsequent time. 

An illustration of this will be found in the effect of an 
intense emotion, whether joyful or sorrowful, on the 
current of our thoughts. The unendurable anguish, that 
attaches to many an intense sorrow, has its source in 
this law. For everything, that has the remotest associa- 
tion with the sorrow, suggests it readily on account of its 
superior intensity, so that our consciousness is scarcely 
ever freed from its presence, " we cannot get it out of 
our minds." Almost every object around us, being 
suggestive of our grief, comes to be invested in its gloom : 
the brighter aspects of nature recall it by contrast, the 
darker by harmony, and the whole world appears 
gloomy in consequence. All literature is full of this 
reaction between the aspects of external nature and the 
moods of the soul. 

Fortunately the same cause imparts an additional zest 
to our intenser joy,s. In consequence of their being 
perpetually re-suggested, " we cannot help thinking of 
them ;" and this perpetual re-suggestion forms what has 
been felicitously described as an under-current of glad- 
ness in the soul. Our joy being readily suggested by 
almost any object, everything around us comes to be 
lighted up with its radiance ; the whole world seems 
happy. 

M Let no one ask me how it came to pass : 
It seems that I am happy, that to me 
A brighter emerald twinkles in the grass, 
A purer sapphire melts into the sea."* 



* Tennyson's Maud, xviii., 6. 



Association. 97 

The love-songs of all literatures represent the dominant 
passion as being continually re-awakened even by the 
most trivial associations, while it throws its charm over 
the whole of nature and of life ; and all the other 
emotions, in their intenser forms, manifest the same 
power. 

In the light of this law we may, therefore, inter- 
pret a number of phenomena, which Mr. Mill and 
other psychologists have endeavoured to summarise 
in a general statement. " The following," says Mr. 
Mill,* " is one of the simple laws of mind. Ideas 
of a pleasurable or painful character form associations 
more easily and strongly than other ideas, that is, 
they become associated after fewer repetitions, and 

the association is more durable By 

deduction from this law, many of the more special laws 
which experience shows to exist among particular 
mental phenomena may be demonstrated and ex- 
plained : the ease and rapidity, for instance, with which 
thoughts connected with our passions or our more 
cherished interests are excited, and the firm hold which 
the facts relating to them have on our memory ; the 
vivid recollections we retain of minute circumstances 
which accompanied any object or event that deeply in- 
terested us, and of the times and places in which w r e 
have been very happy or very miserable; the horror 
with which we viev the accidental instrument of any 
occurrence which shocked us, or the locality where it 
took place, and the pleasure we derive from any 
memorial of past enjoyment ; all these effects being pro- 



* System of Logic, Book iii., Chapter xiii., § 6. See further 
on the subject Mill's Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. i., fourth 
paper. 

G 



98 Psychology. 

portional to the sensibility of the individual mind, and the 
consequent intensity of the pain or pleasure from which the 

association originated. Associations being 

of two sorts, either between synchronous or between 
successive impressions ; and the influence of the law, 
which renders associations stronger in proportion to the 
pleasurable or painful character of the impressions, being 
felt with peculiar force in the synchronous class of 
associations ; .... in minds of strong organic 
sensibility synchronous associations will be likely to 
predominate, producing a tendency to conceive things 
in pictures and in the concrete, richly clothed in 
attributes and circumstances, a mental habit which is 
commonly called Imagination, and is one of the 
peculiarities of the painter and poet ; while persons of 
more moderate sensibility to pleasure and pain will have 
a tendency to associate facts chiefly in the order of their 
succession, and such persons, if they possess mental 
superiority, will addict themselves to history or science 
rather than creative art." 

The interesting phenomena, referred to in this quota- 
tion, all admit of being viewed as results of the more 
general law, that the superior intensity of a mental 
impression, without reference to its pleasurable or 
painful character, renders it more suggestible as well as 
more suggestive; and this generalisation of the 
phenomena is, indeed, implied in the words of the 
passage which I have italicised. 

One other remark may be made in this connection. 
It is suggested, in the above quotation, that an intense 
sensibility will generally create the poetic or artistic 
tendency to synchronous rather than successive, that is, 
local rather than temporal, associations It thus appears 
that local associations are based on the comparatively 



Association. 99 

intense impressions of sense, and that therefore in this 
fact, coupled (as already observed) with the superior 
suggestiveness of intensity, we have a partial, if not 
complete, explanation of the phenomenon noticed in the 
previous section, that mental states become more easily 
suggestible when they are linked together by some 
local association. 

(C) Frequency of recurrence. This cause of increased 
suggestibility becomes universally known in our earliest 
years. When a child is set to learn a lesson, he 
naturally repeats it over and over again, confident that 
by this artifice it will be more readily suggested to his 
mind when he is called to remember it at examination. 
It is probably this circumstance also that mainly 
constitutes what is understood by familiarity, an object 
that is described as familiar being thereby classed 
among those that are frequently recurring to the mind in 
the home-life of a family. 

It is important, however, to observe that this part of 
the Law of Suggestibility is always conditioned by the 
previous part. For suppose two boys of equal ability set 
themselves to learn the same lesson, one repeating it a 
dozen times inattentively, while the other repeats it but 
two or three times with intense concentration of mind, 
the chances are all in favour of the latter remembering 
it more easily afterwards. 

Before passing from this law, an illustration of it may 
be noticed, which explains a peculiar difference in the 
memory of different persons. It has often been pointed 
out, that memory implies both a capacity of retaining 
knowledge and a faculty of recalling it ; and therefore it 
is not uncommon to find men who, by their retentive 
capacity, have accumulated vast stores of learning, and 
are yet gifted with comparatively little readiness in re 



ioo Psychology. 

calling it when wanted, though it is more common to 
meet with those who exhibit great quickness in repro- 
ducing comparatively slender acquirements. This 
familiar distinction between retentive and ready 
memories is, partially at least, explained by the different 
conditions of suggestibility ; for, as some psychologists 
have already observed, retentiveness is cultivated mainly 
by intense concentration of the mind in the acquisition 
of knowledge, while readiness is attained rather by 
frequent repetition of what has been learnt. As the 
reproduction of what we have already mastered is an 
easier and pleasanter occupation than the task of master- 
ing what is yet unknown, it is not difficult to understand 
why memories of comparative readiness should be met 
with more frequently than those of vast extent. Readi- 
ness, moreover, though often combined with extremely 
limited attainments, yet produces in the popular mind 
the most striking and intelligible impression of mental 
power, while, on the other hand, the absence of quick- 
ness in recollection may create an appearance of mental 
slowness — of dullness — in men of great erudition ; and 
this contrast may account for the popular illusion, 
which is fortunately contradicted by many conspicuous 
examples, that great memories are incompatible with 
great intellects.* 



* Sir W. Hamilton, who expresses this distinction by his 
Conservative (or Retentive) and Reproductive Faculties, adduces a 
number of philosophers, ancient and modern, by whom the 
distinction has been recognised. See his Lectures on Metaphysics, 
Lect. xxx. ; and compare Stewart's Elements, Chap. vi. Both of 
these passages may be recommended to the student for their 
abundant illustration, not only of this distinction, but of other 
interesting facts connected with memory. 



Association. 101 

iii. — Law of Mutual Suggestiveness and Suggestibility. 

The drift of this law admits of its being appropriately 
described also as the Law of Uniform Association. It 
may be expressed as follows : — 

States of mind are more likely to suggest each other in 
proportion to the uniformity of their previous 
association, and in the order in which they have 
been associated. 
It may not be without use to distinguish here between 
this law and the third part of the previous law. A 
mental state may frequently recur in consciousness, 
without being always associated with the same mental 
state ; and this frequent recurrence, even in different 
associations, will render it more suggestible than at first 
by any suggestive circumstance. But if its frequent 
recurrence has been due to its association with the same 
cause, then the likelihood of its being suggested when- 
ever that cause makes its appearance will be greatly 
increased, and increased in proportion to the uniformity 
with which it has been previously associated with that 
cause. It follows also from this law that, if a mental 
state A has been associated very frequently with a 
second B, and only at occasional intervals with a third 
C, then unless some other law of suggestion intervene, 
B is more likely than C to be suggested by A. 

The full exposition of this law can be found only in 
later analyses ; but here it may be observed that a simple 
instance of its operation is met with in learning a passage 
by heart. In this process not only do we repeat the 
words frequently, but we repeat them in the same 
connections, so that each preceding word becomes 
attached in our consciousness to each succeeding word 
with a certain degree of uniformity. As this uniformity 



102 Psychology. 

increases, there grows a stronger tendency in each 
preceding to suggest each succeeding word. The 
strength of this tendency is often exhibited by speakers, 
when they quote a passage, inadvertently dragging in its 
context, even though it may have no logical connection 
with the point, to illustrate which the quotation was 
made. We say that they have become habituated to 
connect the context with the text ; and it will appear by 
and by, that the strength of habit is due to the power of 
suggestion arising from the uniform association of the 
suggesting and suggested states of mind. 

It must be observed, however, that the tendency 
arising from uniform association, manifests its strength 
merely in the order of the association. A familiar 
illustration is experienced in the difficulty of repeating 
backwards the alphabet or any familiar passage in 
literature, compared with the mechanical ease with which 
they may be repeated in the right direction. 

There is an extreme case of this law which demands 
special consideration. When an association of mental 
states has attained the highest degree of uniformity, — 
has reached, or approached, absolute invariability, — 
there arises an effect of such a peculiar nature, that it 
could scarcely have been anticipated from the Law of 
Uniform Association. The suggestion resulting from 
such an invariable association becomes irresistible and 
instantaneous. When, in all our ordinary experience, 
two states of mind, A and B, have been uniformly 
associated for a while, A acquires such a power of 
suggesting B, and B such a power of being suggested by 
A, that it no longer remains a matter of choice with us 
whether the suggestion shall take place or not; it 
becomes irresistible. But it becomes instantaneous as 
well : there is no appreciable interval between the 



Association. 103 

suggesting and the suggested states; the latter rushes 
into consciousness like a flash of immediate intuition, 
and we fail to observe that it is given merely through the 
medium of the former, which generally passes unnoticed. 
Although this phenomenon is in reality merely an 
extreme form of the Law of Uniform Association, yet it 
is at once so striking in its character, and of such 
significance as affording a clue to many otherwise 
inexplicable facts, that it is deserving of separate recog- 
nition. It may, accordingly, be distinguished, from one 
point of view, as the Law of Invariable Association^* 
from another point of view, as the Law of Irresistible and 
Instantaneous Suggestion. The drift of this law is in- 
dicated in the following expression : — 

States of mind, which have long been invariably, or 
almost invariably, associated, suggest each other 
irresistibly and instantaneously in the order in which 
they have been associated. 
Numerous illustrations of this law must be noticed 
afterwards, especially in the analysis of our perceptions. 
These cognitions generally appear like direct presenta- 
tions of an external object to consciousness, whereas 
psychological analysis discloses the fact that they are 
merely suggestions which have become instantaneous 
from long association. Our perceptions belong to a class 
of phenomena which may appropriately be noticed here 
by way of illustrating the effects of irresistible and 
instantaneous suggestion. They are the phenomena 
styled habits. A habit is a tendency in certain actions 
to recur, which is acquired by repeated occurrence. 



* Some writers have employed the less unexceptionable term, 
Inseparable Association. 



io4 Psychology. 

It differs, in the fact of its being acquired, from 
an instinct, which is a tendency of the same sort, 
born with the individual. Habit, therefore, pre- 
sents a problem for the psychologist in the fact, 
that a tendency to perform certain actions is created 
by repeating them frequently before. When we begin 
to acquire a habit or dexterity, we perform deliber- 
ately, slowly, and in general with difficulty, the actions 
which it implies ; but gradually by frequent repetition, — 
by practice, as it is commonly expressed, — the difficulty, 
slowness, and deliberation, with which the actions were 
done at first, give way to ease, rapidity, and unconscious- 
ness. The actions are then described at times as being 
done instinctively, from their resemblance to the results 
which nature produces in us without any conscious voli- 
tion on our part ; while their resemblance to the regular, 
easy, unintelligent workings of a machine leads us to 
speak of them also as being done mechanically. In 
learning to read, for example, the child at first familiarises 
himself slowly with the sound of every letter, slowly 
acquires the power of recognising the sounds of different 
combinations, of spelling syllable by syllable, and word 
by word, till he is able to recognise at a glance entire 
words without the previous painful labour of spelling each 
letter, entire clauses and sentences without dwelling upon 
ea:h word, and even to catch the meaning of whole pages 
when they are merely run over in a hurried glance. The 
same process is observed in learning to walk, to speak, to 
sing, to play on a musical instrument, to direct pencil or 
chisel or sword, and generally in acquiring all those arts 
that are necessary for existence or for the enjoyment of 
life. 

The peculiar problem of these phenomena is solved 
mainly by the law of Irresistible and Instantaneous 



Association. 105 

Suggestion. Of course in the acquisition of a habit that 
is interesting the mind will naturally be occupied with 
some degree of intensity, while the mere repetition of an 
action tends to make it more easily suggested, whether 
it has entered into any uniform association with others or 
not. But the tendency in a series of phenomena to 
recur, which constitutes a habit, is created by the general 
fact, that one phenomenon tends to be suggested by 
another more readily in proportion to the uniformity 
with which the former has already been suggested in 
association with the latter. Take, by way of illustration, 
the learning of a language, native or foreign. In learning 
to nnde?'stand the language, we associate sounds with 
ideas, so that after a while the latter come to be sug- 
gested irresistibly and instantaneously by the former. 
On the other hand, in learning to speak the language it 
is necessary, first of all, to associate ideas with articulate 
sounds, so that the former will suggest the latter ; but 
the suggested sounds must further be associated with, the 
remembered sensations of the muscular effort in the 
vocal organs, by which the sounds are produced. 

We are thus in a position to explain the peculiar cir- 
cumstance connected with our habits, that we become 
capable of performing a series of actions without being 
conscious of the individual actions in the series, but 
merely of the series as a whole. When a habit is con- 
firmed, when any dexterity is perfectly mastered, each 
antecedent in the series of actions involved becomes so 
indissolubly associated with each consequent, as to 
suggest it irresistibly and instantaneously. Now, to 
excite consciousness any stimulus must fulfil certain 
conditions. It must not only reach a certain intensity, 
but it must endure for a certain length of time. The 
duration necessary to excite consciousness varies evi- 



106 Psychology. 

dently for different organs in the same person, for the 
same organ in different persons, and even for the same 
organ in the same person at different times. In taste 
and smell sensations are very soon confounded, even 
when they do not follow each other in very rapid 
succession. The higher senses themselves, though their 
sensations are much more quickly distinguishable, are 
subject to the same condition. In hearing, as we have 
already seen,* when vibrations reach a greater rapidity 
than about forty in a second, they become fused into one 
tone. Even in the most intellectual of the senses a 
rapid scries of impressions results in a similar fusion. 
Thus the appearance of a circle of light may be produced 
by whirling a lighted point with sufficient velocity before 
the eyes ; the sensation of white light may be excited by 
a similar movement of the colours of the spectrum, into 
which it is decomposed ; while many striking optical 
effects of the same sort are now familiar in the thauma- 
trope, the wheel of life, and other interesting scientific toys. 
In all such fusion of different impressions the same 
cause may be traced. Before each prior impression has 
died away, or even before each prior stimulus has had 
time to excite distinct consciousness, the next supervenes. 
The resultant consciousness is, therefore, the conscious- 
ness, not of any single impression in the series, but of 
them all blended together. Now, this is precisely the 
phenomenon that is witnessed when a series of actions 
are performed with the velocity characteristic of habits 
and dexterities. The indistinguishability of the individ- 
ual actions, — their fusion in a general consciousness of the 
series as a whole, — is a result of the rapidity, the instan- 



* Book i., Part i., Chapter ii., § 4. 



Association. 107 

taneousness, with which suggestion takes place when it 
is based on a prolonged association of an uniform kind. 

It thus appears that actions, originally voluntary, 
may, by frequent repetition for a length of time, be re- 
moved from the sphere of human will into the sphere of 
those natural forces that form the human constitution. 
From the physiological point of view these phenomena 
are described as actions of the nervous system which 
work out their results in human life without exciting con- 
sciousness. It is a problem for the physiologist to ex- 
plain how nerve-tissues, which at first adapt themselves 
only with difficulty to certain movements, become so 
pliable after repeated practice of the movements, that 
these are performed with mechanical ease. Probably the 
nutrition of the tissues is so directed that their structure 
becomes modified in adaptation to the repeated move- 
ments. It is in fact obvious, even to one simply obser- 
ving his own sensations, that, when certain currents of 
the blood and currents of nerve-force have been 
prolonged for a while by the repetition of a series 
of movements, they often continue their course for 
hours after the movements have ceased. But, 
whatever explanation physiology may give, there 
can be no doubt of the fact, that actions in the 
nervous and muscular systems, which at first are per- 
formed with deliberate and even painfully conscious 
efforts of volition, come to be carried on automatically 
after a while. This phenomenon is accordingly described 
as automatic or reflex action ; and as even some of the 
higher mental operations may be thus, by habitual exer- 
cise, withdrawn from the region of conscious effort into 
the control of the highest nerve-centres in the brain, it 
has become customary, of recent years, to recognise a 
process of " unconscious cerebration." 



108 Psychology. 

It is in the phenomena thus brought under the general 
Law of Irresistible and Instantaneous Suggestion, that 
the great moral and religious teachers of the world have 
found the inevitable fact of retribution which rules with 
an unfailing justice all the actions of men, a fact which 
has often been expressed by the singularly appropriate 
figure, implied in the statement, that " whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap." 



Comparison. 109 



CHAPTER II. 



COMPARISON. 

IN our consciousness mental states appear, not in ab- 
solute isolation from each other, but in manifold 
relations ; and mental life consists, not in the conscious- 
ness of isolated states, but in the consciousness of 
the relations which they hold one to another. The 
consciousness of relations is always, in its essential 
nature, an act of comparison; the related phenomena 
must be compared in order to the discovery of their 
relations. The term comparison may not fully express 
all that is involved in the mental act under consideration ; 
but it implicitly denotes all that is understood, inasmuch 
as there cannot be a comparison without a consciousness 
of some relation between the objects compared. There 
are some features of resemblance between comparison 
and suggestion ; but a confusion of the two would lead 
to a very radical misapprehension regarding mental 
phenomena. It is desirable, therefore, to make clear 
the distinction between the two processes, 

The two resemble one another in the fact that both 
require two mental states in order to their possibility. 
Suggestion always implies a suggesting and a suggested 
state of mind, while comparison supposes two things 10 
be compared. There is a further resemblance in the 
fact that both acts imply a relation between the two 



1 10 Psychology. 

states which they presuppose. In connection with the 
Primary Laws of Suggestion, it was shown that two 
mental states must be related by similarity or contiguity 
before they can suggest each other ; and it is still more 
obvious that, in being compared, they are brought into 
relation. 

But there are two important differences which dis- 
tinguish comparison and suggestion. The first is, 
that suggestion implies a sequence, — a transition from 
the suggesting to the suggested state ; while, in order to 
the very possibility of comparison, the phenomena 
compared must be simultaneously present to conscious- 
ness. Besides, there is a second and more radical 
difference — it is the essential difference — between the 
two acts. In suggestion we are conscious of the one 
related state, then of the other, the relation forming 
merely an unconscious bond of connection between them; 
whereas the distinctive nature of comparison consists in 
its being a consciousness of the relation between the 
related states. 

Comparison may thus be defined a knowledge of rela- 
tions. As such it is the highest function of mind ; it 
implies not only the capacity of receiving impressions, 
and of allowing these unreflectingly to repeat themselves 
in the order and connexions determined by their 
accidental associations in consciousness ; it implies 
further the faculty of cognising, beyond the separate 
impressions, the relation in which they stand to each 
other. This is the faculty which is understood by the 
various expressions descriptive of mind in its highest 
aspects, — Thought, Understanding, Judgment, Intellect, 
Reason. 

To the full explanation of comparison, it would be 
necessary to unfold all the relations which it is capable 



Comparison. Ill 

of discovering. It is impossible, however, to describe 
these at present without entering upon problems, which 
must be reserved for subsequent discussion. But, with- 
out anticipating this discussion, it may be observed that 
there are two fundamental relations, which, if not the 
type of all others, form at least the basis of all knowledge. 
These are the relations of Identity and Difference. The 
consciousness of the former is technically called an 
Affirmative Judgment; that of the latter, a Negative 
Judgment. It will soon be seen that these judgments 
enter into all our knowledge. 

Such acts of judgment or comparison, in which pheno- 
mena are identified and discriminated, are governed by 
laws. These laws, in their supreme form, are three, which 
are accordingly named the General Laws of Thought. 
Though it may seem paradoxical to say so, the chief 
difficulty which is experienced in understanding the pur 
port of these laws arises probably from their excessive 
simplicity. They are such obvious truisms, that there 
seems almost an insult to intelligence in their mere 
statement ; and, accordingly, there is a temptation to 
seek some more profound meaning in them than that 
which they show on their surface. But the laws, which 
form the elementary principles of all thinking, must be 
so utterly evident, that nothing more evident can be con- 
ceived, — so absolutely certain, that nothing more certain 
can be adduced either for their proof or for their dis- 
proof. 

The following, then, are the General Laws of 
Thought : — 

I. The Law of Identity is popularly expressed in the 
formula, Whatever is, is ; more technically in the 
formula, A is A. Its purport, as a law of thought will 
probably be better understood by the following state- 



1 1 2 Psychology. 

men t : — Whatever is thought must be thought to be that 
which it is thought. 

II. The Law of Contradiction, as it is commonly 
called, or the Law of Non- Contradiction, as it has been, 
perhaps more appropriately, called, is expressed in the 
popular formula, // is impossible for a thing to be and not 
to be at the same time, sometimes in the technical 
formula, A is not non-A. The purport of the law may 
be more clearly indicated by the statement : — Whatever 
is thought cannot be thought not to be that which it is 
thought. 

III. The Law of Excluded Middle is so called, because 
by it a middle or third alternative is excluded between 
two contradictory judgments, inasmuch as one of these 
must always be in thought affirmed, the other in thought 
denied. This law is not, like the other two, known by 
any familiar statement. Its technical expression is the 
formula, A either is or is not B ; but perhaps the follow- 
ing formula may explain it more distinctly: — Of whatever 
is thought anything else that is thinkable must either be or 
not be thought. 

The science, which expounds these laws in all their 
subordinate applications, is Logic. The function of 
Logic is, therefore, to discover the norm, by which 
thought should be regulated. It is not, however, with 
normal, but with actual, thinking, that psychology has to 
do ; and we shall find, as we proceed, that the problems 
of the two sciences have sometimes been unnecessarily 
complicated by not being kept distinct 



BOOK II 



SPECIAL PSYCHOLOGY 



IN the previous Book we have examined those 
elementary products of natural sensibility which 
have been called the raw materials of mind, as well as 
the processes by which these are wrought into the com- 
binations which form the actual mental life. Our task 
is now to investigate the distinctive nature of the different 
combinations which are thus formed in the living 
consciousness of men. These combinations assume 
three fundamental types, which are usually distinguished 
by the names of Cognition, Feeling, and Volition. 
Those different types of mental life arise from the 
development of three different aspects which elementary 
sensations present. For these may be viewed as sources 
either of (i) information, or (2) of pleasurable and 
painful excitement, or (3) of impulse to action. In so 
far as the first aspect of sensation is developed in any 
mental combination, ihe resultant consciousness is a 
cognition ; the development of the second aspect gives 
rise to feeling or emotion, while volition is evolved from 
the third. These three aspects of sensation may, there- 
fore, be described as the intellectual or cognitional, the 
emotional, and the volitional. 

* Though the germ of this threefold classification is by some 
writers traced as far back as the Timaeus of Plato, yet it seems to 



n6 Psychology. 

The evolution, therefore, of those mental combinations 
which form the intellect, the emotions, and the will of 
man, is determined by the readiness with which sensa- 
tions submit to the two processes of association and 
comparison. Now, association involves both a suggesting 
and a suggested state of mind ; and, accordingly, the 
associability of a sensation must be interpreted by 
reference both to its suggestiveness and its suggestibility. 
Comparison, also, involves both identification and dis- 
crimination, so that the comparability of sensations is to 
be estimated by their power of being at once identified 
and distinguished. It may be added that comparability 
holds in representation as well as in presentation. The 
distinct representability of a sensation, therefore, expresses 
the clearness with which it may be distinguished and 
identified when it is merely represented in memory or 
imagination. Consequently, distinct representability is 
not to be confounded with ready suggestibility ; for a 
sensation may be readily recalled as an indefinite fact of 
mental life, even when its nature cannot be vividly repre- 
sented in consciousness.* 

have taken definite form first among the writers of the Leibnitio- 
Wolfian School about the middle of last century, especially Meier, 
Moses Mendelssohn, and Tetens (Erdmann's Geschichte der Philoso- 
phic, § 301, 2). As Kant was brought up in this school and 
adopted the classification, it has passed through his writings into 
the philosophical literature of all Europe. See an historical and 
critical discussion of the subject in Wundt's Physiologische Psycho- 
logies Vol. i., pp. 11-18 (2nd ed.) See also Hamilton's Lectures on 
Metaphysics, Lect. xi., and Lotze's Mikrokosmus, Bookii., chap. 2. 
* The distinction here indicated is expressed by Sir William 
Hamilton in the discrimination of the Representative from the 
Reproductive Faculty. See his Lectures on Metaphysics (xxxi.- 
xxxiii.), where interesting illustrations of the distinction will be 
found. 



Special Psychology. 1 1 y 

It will be seen, then, that we are thus furnished with 
a criterion to determine the order in which the senses 
take rank as contributing more or less important 
materials for the upbuilding of mind in all its three 
functions. Their relative value for this purpose depends 
on the associability and comparability of their sensations. 
The examination of the different senses in detail with 
the view of determining their relative value in this 
respect is part of the problem which forms the subject 
of the present Book ; but one or two general remarks on 
the subject may be made at present. 

i. The two properties of associability and compara- 
bility evidently coincide in general, those sensations, 
which can be most clearly discriminated and identified, 
being the most powerfully suggestive and the most 
readily suggestible. Accordingly the mental value of 
sensations may sometimes, with sufficient accuracy, be 
estimated by distinct representability. For as representa- 
tion is impossible without suggestion, and as the distinct 
representation of anything implies that it can be clearly 
discriminated and identified, the distinct representability 
of a sensation may be taken as a convenient, though not 
a complete, expression of its associability and compara- 
bility, These two qualities, moreover, enable us to 
interpret the language which ascribes a superior refine- 
ment, intellectual or moral, to some sensations over 
others. For the association and comparison of a 
sensation with others imply that the consciousness is 
raised above the gro;s act of sense, and occupied witli 
an act of thought — a relation. This power of rising 
above the mere animal sensibility is what constitutes 
refinement. 

2. The associability and comparability of a sensation 
depend on the nature of the other sensations with which 



u8 Psychology. 

it is associated and compared, (a). Take associability 
first. A sensation with low powers of association will 
associate more readily with other sensations which are of 
strong associability. Thus a taste, which is of compara- 
tively slight mental value, is neither very suggestive of 
other tastes nor very readily suggested by them, but it 
becomes at once more suggestive and suggestible, if it is 
associated with a higher sensation, such as a colour. 
(b). The same fact may be noticed in the relative 
comparability of different sensations. The sensations, 
which do not admit of distinct comparison with one 
another, are easily compared with any class of sensations 
that are in themselves more comparable. 

These remarks will receive illustration as we proceed 
in our analysis of the three forms of mental activity. For 
convenience in exposition ™* *kaU divide this Book into 
three Parts. 



Cognitions* 119 



PART I 



COGNITIONS. 

THOUGH the more technical term, Cognition, has 
come into general use for the class of phenomena 
investigated in this Part, yet we shall frequently recur to 
the familiar word, knowledge, using, where necessary, the 
plural, knowledges, which, though commonly abandoned 
in modern English, was employed by older writers. As 
cognate with the substantive, cognition, it may often be 
convenient to use the verb, cognise, and the adjective, 
cognitive. 

In classifying the phenomena of cognition, the most 
natural principle of guidance would be to follow the 
natural evolution of human intelligence. The course of 
such an evolution is not so easily traced as in the case of 
many among the simpler and more palpable phenomena 
of external nature; for, as the subsequent analysis will 
show, the principal forms of intelligence are, to a certain 
extent, developed simultaneously. At the same time it 
is not impossible to discover the order in which the most 
distinctly marked varieties of cognition tend to reach a 
certain degree of maturity. Naturally the developing 
intelligence apprehends first of all the individual sensible 



1 20 Psychology 

object. Tli is is the cognition to which the name of 
Perception is now commonly applied. The next stage 
is the conception of a class, — the intellectual activity 
described by such terms as Generalisation. Running 
alongside of these cognitions, but later in its distinct 
evolution, is the process of Reasoning, by which thought 
ascends from the individual to the class, or descends 
from the class to the individual, with a consciousness of 
the reason for its ascent or descent. Lastly, there is an 
activity of intelligence which apprehends the universal 
in the particular, — the general attributes of the class in 
individual form ; and this may, with sufficient accuracy 
at present, be described as Idealisation. Besides these 
normal functions of intelligence, it will be advisable to 
examine some of those familiar illusions which simulate 
the appearance of cognition. Each of these subjects 
demands a separate chapter for satisfactory discussion ; 
and we shall then proceed, in a concluding chapter, to 
summarise the results, to which the discussion of these 
subjects points, in regard to the general nature of 
knowledge. 



Perception. 121 



CHAPTER I. 



PERCEPTION. 

THE word Perception, like its Latin original, was, 
in earlier philosophical writings, and is still, in 
common speech, employed in a somewhat looser sense 
for any kind of knowledge, at least, if it is apparently 
immediate, that is, if it does not seem to imply any very 
lengthy process for its attainment. In more recent times, 
however, it has come to be limited, in English philoso- 
phical literature, to the knowledge of an individual 
sensible object, this limitation having probably been 
brought about mainly by the influence of the Scottish 
School.* 

The perception of an object, especially through the 
sense of sight, seems, to the ordinary consciousness, the 
most simple of cognitions, — the direct presentation of an 
object to the mind through the channels of sense. This 
cognition has, therefore, long withstood the efforts of 
psychological analysis ; and an appeal against such 
efforts has been repeatedly made, even in recent 
philosophy, to the common sense, to the universal and 



* An interesting note by Sir William Hamilton on the history of 
this word will be found in his edition of field's Ho/As, p. 876. 



122 Psychology. 

irresistible convictions of men * It will appear, however, 
on examination, that even the simplest act of perception 
implies both association and comparison, and therefore a 
combination of elements which are associated and com- 
pared. 

To make this evident, let us take a very simple 
perception by way of a general illustration. The percep- 
tion of the taste of an apple furnishes a good example. 
To an unscientific mind the perception will appear 
simply as the immediate cognition of an object revealed 
through the sense of taste. But the moment scientific 
analysis sets to work on the perception, it discloses a 
much more complicated composition. For it becomes 
at once evident that the sense of taste, by itself, is 
altogether incompetent to give even such a simple cog- 
nition, or indeed any other cognition whatever. Isolate 
the sense of taste from other sources of information, in 
order to find what it contributes to our knowledge ; and 
what is the result ? What are we conscious of in tasting? 
Merely of the sensation, — the mental phenomenon, — 
that we call a taste. But to understand the full purport 
of this, observe what it implies; and what we are 
conscious of may perhaps be most fully brought to view 
by pointing out what we are not conscious of in tasting. 

i. We are not conscious, by taste alone, of any sapid 
property in a body, — of any property by reason of which 
it is capable of exciting a sensation of taste. It is 
necessary to bear this constantly in mind on account of 
the ambiguity in the word taste. Like the names of 
other sensations, such as smell, colour, sound, and heat, 



* See the Dissertation on the Philosophy of Common Sense, by Sir 
W. Hamilton, appended to his edition of ReicTs Works. 



Perception, 123 

taste is used both for a sensation and for the external 
cause by which the sensation is produced. Now, we are 
immediately conscious of the sensation which we call a 
taste ; but what that is in a body, which excites the 
sensation, could never be discovered by any use of the 
sense of taste alone, — can be discovered only by those 
researches of the chemist, which call into play various 
other senses and faculties of intelligence. 

2. We are not conscious, by taste alone, of any body 
at all. A body is a thing that occupies space, and 
resists our efforts to displace it from the space occupied ; 
but it need scarcely be said that neither space nor 
resistance can be tasted. 

3. It follows from this that taste of itself gives us 
information, not even of our own body, nor — it is almost 
needless to add — of any organ in our body, through 
which we afterwards learn that the sensations of taste are 
received. 

If, then, in the mere act of tasting, our consciousness 
is limited to the sensation excited, it may be asked, how 
do we come to know, — to perceive anything by the sense 
of taste at all? To answer this question, we must 
understand all that a sensation involves. Now, it is true 
that, in its abstract indeterminateness, a sensation may 
be described as a purely subjective condition of mind. 
But as a concrete fact of mental life, it is a fact of which 
we must be conscious ; and to say that we are conscious 
of it is merely another way of saying that it is an object 
known. The consciousness of a sensation may, indeed, 
take a variety of forms. The sensation may be such, 
that its pleasurable or painful character becomes pre- 
dominant ; and then the consciousness appears as mere 
feeling. But the pleasure or pain felt may act as a 
stimulus to the will, and then a conscious volition is the 



124 Psychology. 

result. . If, however, the pleasure or pain excited by a 
sensation is subordinate to the information communicated, 
the consciousness has risen to a cognitive act. It will, 
therefore, appear by and by, that sensations of absorbing 
intensity, however important in view of the contributions 
they make to the pleasures and pains of human life, are 
comparatively valueless for the purposes of human 
knowledge ; while nearly all our information about the 
world in which we live is based on sensations which, if 
not absolutely neutral in quality, are at least so faintly 
pleasurable or painful, that the consciousness, instead of 
being absorbed in our subjective condition, may con- 
template that condition with the same calm disinterested- 
ness as if it were an objective fact. 

The truth is that, in being conscious of a sensation, it 
becomes to us, not merely a subjective state, but an 
object of knowledge. This objectification of sensations 
implies, of course, that we distinguish an object known 
from ourselves who know it. How those antithetical 
ideas of self and notself are originally formed, is a 
problem that must be reserved for subsequent discussion. 
At the present stage it need only be observed that, in 
some way or other, this distinction is rendered possible. 
Now, it is this distinction that constitutes the first step in 
the evolution of knowledge ; for I cannot be said to 
know until I am conscious of something that is not I, 
that is known by me. But whenever anything becomes 
to me an object, it may be brought info those combina- 
tions and comparisons which constitute all our cognitions 
in their various degrees of complexity. To these 
combinations and comparisons we now proceed; but it 
should be observed that, even at this stage, an act 
of comparison has been performed; for the discrimination 
of self and notself is a consciousness of difference. 



Perception. 12$ 

Proceeding in the analysis of the simple perception 
with which we set out, — the perception of the taste of an 
apple, — we immediately detect further acts of comparison 
involved. To know this sensation as the taste of an 
apple, implies both a cognition of difference and a 
cognition of identity, — in fact, a twofold cognition of 
each. For, in the first place, I cannot know the 
sensation to be a taste, without distinguishing it from 
other sensations which are not tastes ; nor, still further, 
can I know it to be the taste of an apple, without 
distinguishing it from tastes which are produced by other 
substances. We may leave out of consideration the 
case in which my perception may be more specially 
discriminative by my knowledge of the difference 
between the tastes of varieties of apples. But, in the 
second place, I cannot know this sensation to be a 
taste, except by identifying it with similar sensations 
experienced before, and known to be tastes ; while the 
more definite perception of the taste as being the taste 
of an apple implies that I have identified it with previous 
tastes which I knew to be produced by that fruit. 

But what is implied in these acts of comparison ? It 
is evidently impossible to compare a present sensation 
with sensations of the past, by way either of discriminat- 
ing or of identifying, unless these sensations are repro- 
duced in my present consciousness by suggestion. This, 
however, is not the only activity of suggestion in the for- 
mation of the perception. For when I perceive a taste 
to be the taste of an apple, I associate the taste with 
those general appearances which an apple presents. But 
these appearances are somewhat complex. They contain 
ideas of a spherical shape as well as of comparative 
smoothness and hardness, received from touch and the 
muscular sense ; they involve also visual ideas, — ideas of 



1 26 Psychology. 

colour, red, green, or russet, according to the variety o< 
apple that most readily recurs to the mind. This com- 
plex association of muscular, tactile, and visual ideas, is 
therefore also suggested in the perception of the taste of 
an apple. The perception involves some additional ele- 
ments of a more difficult nature ; but these need not be 
discussed here. 

It is scarcely possible to hit upon a perception more 
simple in appearance than that which has been selected 
for illustration ; yet even this perception is seen to in- 
volve considerable complexity. It is true that this com- 
plexity is brought to light only by such an analysis as 
that which we have gone through ; and consequently the 
young observer finds it difficult, in spite of the analysis, 
to admit such complexity in an act which seems so simple. 
To remove this difficulty he must remember that such 
perceptions were not always so simple as they are now. 
The perceptions, which appear absolutely simple to the 
intelligence of maturity, are evidently, in childhood, the 
result of tentative, hesitating intellectual efforts, such as 
w r e are conscious of in later years, when we seek to 
become acquainted with a novel set of phenomena, — 
to master a new language or a new science. Moreover, 
the secondary laws of suggestion show that mental acts 
come to reproduce themselves more readily by repetition, 
especially in uniform associations, till they may become 
absolutely instantaneous ; and it is in virtue of this, that 
the tentative hesitancy of infantile observations disappears 
with the growth of disciplined intelligence. 

After this exposition of the general process by which 
perceptions are formed, we proceed to the examination 
of the special perceptions which we owe to the several 
senses. Here, again, the exposition should most appro- 
priately follow the natural evolution of intelligence, if 



Perception. 1 27 

that evolution could be traced with certainty. On such 
a principle we should begin with the vaguest forms of 
general sensibility, and follow cur perceptions as they 
were gradually developed in connection with the most 
distinctly differentiated forms of special sensibility. But 
conscious perceptions presuppose special senses already 
developed ; and consequently there is a convenience in 
beginning the exposition with these. Thera is a further 
convenience in taking first those senses which are of low 
intellectual power, inasmuch as their perceptions are 
necessarily of a much less complicated character than 
those which are based on sensations that readily admit 
of numerous associations and comparisons. We shall, 
therefore, adopt again the order previously followed in 
describing the senses. 



§ 1. — Perceptions of Taste. 

In man generally, as contrasted with the brute, and in 
civilised man especially, as contrasted with the savage, 
even the sense of taste, though lowest of all the special 
senses in intellectual rank, scarcely ever remains at the 
stage of mere sensation. The lower animal, in feeding, 
seems absorbed in the mere organic pleasure which he is 
receiving ; and from the accounts of travellers and 
missionaries, who have become familiar with savage life, 
it appears as if the meal of the lowest savages approached, 
in a disgusting degree, the character of purely animal 
gratification. But the tendency of civilisation is to lift 
man out of mere sensuonsness in the enjoyments of 
taste. In civilised communities, therefore, even the 
gourmand derives his gratification largely from appreciat- 
ing, often with a high degree of nicety, the delicate 



128 Psychology, 

peculiarities of the viands and beverages in which he 
indulges; while the gastronomy of a luxurious life is 
based on a certain amount of scientific art in the 
culinary preparation of food, as well as in the order in 
which dishes and wines are served so as to give the 
largest play to the discriminative sensibility of taste. 

It may be interesting to add here, that the same 
tendency of civilisation in regard to the pleasures of the 
table is exhibited in a variety of other ways. It appears 
in many, if not all, of the customs which regulate meals 
ever more prominently with the progress of wealth and 
culture. The ancient Pagan custom of making sacri- 
fices or libations to the gods, and the Christian custom 
of saying grace, at meals ; the formal ceremony, which 
imparts a certain degree of human dignity to the 
proceedings ; the music, and the decorations of room 
and table, by which the higher senses are gratified ; the 
more purely intellectual enjoyment of conversation, — the 
11 Attic salt " with which the meal of educated men is 
spiced ; — all these indicate the tendency of civilised 
man to raise the act of eating above the character of a 
merely animal act. In fact, from the artistic setting in 
which even the grossest meats may be served, it would 
almost seem as if mere gustatory sensation were to 
become a vanishing fraction of the enjoyments of the 
table. 

All men learn to discriminate the more marked 
differences of taste, especially in articles of food, and can 
thereby often detect the presence of substances which are 
not readily perceptible by other senses. But if the 
attention is specially directed to the minuter differences 
of taste, a delicacy of perception may be reached which 
is sometimes of service, not only to the gourmand in the 
pursuit of pleasure, but in the serious business of life to 



Perception. 1 29 

the chemist, the wine merchant, the oil merchant, and 
others.* It has been observed that, when a more distinct 
perception is desired, the sensibility of the tongue is 
increased by passing sapid bodies over its surface — one 
of the numerous instances in which muscular activity 
comes to the aid of passive sensibility. 

The intellectual element, involved in the perceptions 
of taste, explains the common figure of speech, by which 
the words, expressing these perceptions in various 
languages, are transferred to cognitions which have no 
connection with sense. Thus the word taste in our 
own language, and its equivalent in others, is used for 
the faculty by which we appreciate the beautiful and the 
sublime. The Greek term for wisdom^ co^ia, as we see 
from its Latin kindred sapientia, literally means taste ; 
while, in several passages in which the English version 
represents exactly the original, the Scriptures describe by 
this expression the purest acts of man's spirit.! 

* " I knew a person who possessed the one (the sense of 'taste) 
in so great a perfection, that, after having tasted ten different kinds 
of tea, he would distinguish, without seeing the colour of it, the 
particular sort which was offered him ; and not only so, but any 
two sorts of them that were mixed in equal proportions ; nay, he 
has carried the experiment so far, as, upon tasting the composition 
of three different sorts, to name the parcels from whence the three 
several ingredients were taken." (Addison in Spectator, No. 409V 
Brillat-Savarin reminds us of Roman epicures who professed 
to know from the taste of a fish, whether it had been caught above 
or below bridge, and of those in modern times who could tell by 
taste alone on which leg a partridge had slept {Physiologie du 
Gotit, Anderson's Translation, pp. 25-26). It would be satisfactory 
to have some statements like these verified by proper scientific 
observations. 

t " Taste and see that the Lord is good " (Psalm xxxiv. 8) ; 
"Tasted of the heavenly gift, .... tasted the good word of 
God"(Heb. vi. 4-S). 

1 



130 Psychology. 

But, after all, the intellectual capabilities of taste are 
Blight, when contrasted with those of the other special 
senses ; that is to say, its sensations are not readily 
associable or comparable. 

I. The associability of tastes with tastes is, indeed, im- 
plied in every identification — recognition — of a taste; but 
this is association of that simple sort which is involved 
in the very possibility of knowledge. It is merely the 
revival of a previous sensation through suggestion by a 
present sensation which is identical with it in nature ; in 
other words, it is suggestion by the Law of Similarity. 
But the association of tastes by the Law of Contiguity is 
probably very slight. We seldom, if ever, have an 
instance of one taste suggesting another merely on the 
ground of their having been in consciousness at the same 
time. The association of a taste, however, with ideas of 
a more intellectual sense like sight is more marked. 
Thus a taste will readily recall the visual appearance of 
a sapid body; but this illustrates the associability, not of 
tastes, but of sights. This, too, is the only form in 
which ideas of space associate with tastes. Abstract 
space — position or distance — is incapable of being 
perceived through the medium of this sense. 

II. Tastes do not admit of comparison with ease. It 
is true, that the analysis of a simple perception in the 
introductory part of this chapter has proved that every 
recognition of a taste implies its power of being identified 
and discriminated. But this power, whether in the 
presentation or in the representation of tastes, is ex- 
tremely limited. 

i. In presentation simultaneous tastes can scarcely be 
distinguished at all ; and even a succession of tastes, 
though not very rapid, soon confounds the sense. It is 
by this means, in fact, that we all learn from childhood 



Perception. 1 3 1 

to neutralise a nauseous taste by saturating the mouth 
with a sweet substance beforehand, and thus destroying 
for a time its sensibility to any other. In this respect a 
very marked contrast is furnished by the sensations of 
touch, hearing, and sight, which become indistinguishable 
only in very rapid succession. 

2. But neither can tastes be represented with distinct- 
ness. In the representation of beautiful sights or tones, 
or of tender touches, a delight is often felt similar to that 
furnished by the original sensations ; but no such 
pleasure is ever experienced in the representation of 
tastes. 

" O who 

Can cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By bare imagination of a feast ?" 

The result is that the common furniture of ideas, with 
which the human mind is stocked, is derived only to a 
very slight extent from the sense of taste. In illustra- 
tion of this it has been asserted by Longet, that in dream- 
ing of a feast we never dream of tasting, but merely of 
seeing the viands.* Inquiry, it is true, proves that this 
assertion is too sweeping, though it accords with my per- 
sonal experience. Still it is certain that tastes occupy an 
insignificant place among the pictures that make up the 
consciousness of dreams or of waking life ; and conse- 
quently imagination is seldom sent wandering among the 
mental stores of a revivable past by any impulse which it 
receives from memories of taste. 

It is not, therefore, difficult to explain why the percep- 
tions of taste provide but a slender portion of the imag- 

* Of all persons in the world who should confirm Longet's asser- 
tion but M. Brillat-Savarin 1 See his Physiologie du Go&l (Ander- 
son's translation, p. 153). 



132 Psychology. 

ery which forms the materials of poetic art. The descrip- 
tions of banquets, in which poetry indulges at times, give 
an almost exclusive prominence to those aspects of the 
occasion, which have been already noticed as prevailing 
ever more and more at the meals of civilised men. It is 
the glory of the festal pomp, the visual gratification in 
artistic groupings of colour and form, the rank or beauty 
of the guests, the light play of intellect, and the gush of 
social feeling, — 

" The feast of reason and the flow of soul ; " 

such are the factors of the banquet which the poet se- 
lects as alone suitable for his purpose. If the meats and 
drinks are introduced into the description, except per- 
haps in the poetry of a coarser age, their gustatory effect 
is ignored, they are noticed only in their picturesque 
aspect as forming parts of a beautiful scene.* Perhaps 
an approach to aesthetic enjoyment in gustatory gratifi- 
cation is experienced in the order of tastes prescribed by 
a skilful gastronomy, — 

•' What order so contrived as not to mix 
Tastes not well -joined inelegant, but bring 
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change." 

This may give to tastes a place in the poetry of a ruder 



* In illustration of this Mr. Grant Allen has cited three well 
known descriptions from Milton, Keats, and Tennyson {Physiologi 
cal Aesthetics, pp. 260-1). Similar passages, some briefer, some 
more elaborate, might be adduced both from ancient and from mo- 
dern literature. It is remarkable that even a humorous description, 
with so much mere animal gusto as Burns' verses To a Haggis, 
should not once mention the taste of the dish it celebrates, but 
collect its imagery exclusively from the visual appearance of the 
dish, and its remoter suggestions. 



Perception. 133 

people ; but, strictly speaking, the aesthetic consciousness 
is at zero in the perceptions of this sense. 

§ 2. — Perceptions of Smell. 

It has been already mentioned, that the organ of 
smell, especially its intracranial portion, is more largely 
developed in many of the lower animals than in man. 
As a result of this, among these animals the sense of 
smell is of much higher value as a means of obtaining 
information about the external world, though it is little, 
if at all, used as a source of feeling. To a dog on the 
-cent, the pleasantness or unpleasantness of odours seem3 
insignificant ; he examines with almost equal keenness a 
loathesome putrefaction and a fragrant perfume. But 
he learns more of objects generally from their smell than 
the careless observer might at first suppose. You may 
often catch a dog gazing at a person with the vacant 
look of ignorance or doubt, even when he is near enough 
to see distinctly ; but his recognition is decided at once 
by a whiff of odour. In fact, a psychology of animals 
with a keen scent would, perhaps with truth, describe 
their world as one in which odours take the prominent 
place that sights occupy in ours.* 

A somewhat similar fact is observable in the function 
that smell performs among the lower races of men. The 
savage applies his scent to obtain a great deal of informa- 
tion, for which the civilised man has recourse to the 
higher senses of hearing and sight. Haller states that 



* The significance of this is only beginning to be recognised in 
Comparative Psychology. See an interesting article by Mr. Grant 
Allen, on " Si^ht and Smell in Vertebrates," in Mind for October, 
iSSl. 



1 34 Psychology. 

the negroes of the Antilles can distinguish by smell the 
footstep of a negro from that of a Frenchman ; and, 
according to Humboldt, the same sense enables the 
Peruvian Indians to tell, when a stranger is approaching, 
whether he is an Indian, an European, or a negro. In 
civilised communities, also, it is a remarkable fact, that 
persons of a low mental type exhibit the same charac- 
teristic. Idiots are often observed examining other 
persons by their odour ; * and it is a curious fact, that a 
keen scent for human flesh is commonly ascribed to the 
giants of folk-lore, who are probably the survivals in 
popular tradition of those types of uncultured brute force, 
belonging to an earlier civilisation, with which the 
higher races must have come into conflict in prehistoric 
times. But the tendency of civilisation is to disuse the 
sense of smell as a means of perception, and to resort to 
it merely for its delicate gratifications, f This is signifi- 
cantly indicated in the fact, that language has no names 
for distinct kinds of smell, like the terms by which 
colours and sounds, and even tastes, are diitinguished. 
Odours are designated simply by their agreeable or dis- 
agreeable quality, as perfumes or stenches. 



* Maudsley's Physiology of the Mind t p. 215. 

+ Certain dillerences in the organ of smell among civilised men 
and savages are obvious. Even the external shape — the extraor- 
dinary breadth — of the nose in some of the lower races seems to 
point to a larger expansion of the nasal membrane. But negroes 
often exhibit an additional peculiarity. In men generally the 
interior of the nostrils is convoluted into three meatuses by the three 
turbinated bones. In the negro there is often found a fourth meatus 
above the superior turbinated bone, implying a considerable increase 
of sensitive surface. I cannot find, however, that observations 
have discovered any corresponding enlargement of the olfactory 
bulb. 



Perception, 135 

But even in civilized life smell sometimes acquires 
extraordinary acuteness when there is any cause to 
stimulate its unusual development. The requisite 
stimulus may be derived from professional requirements, 
as when the chemist accustoms himself to detect by 
their odour the presence of certain substances in com- 
pounds. The peculiar education, to which Caspar 
Hauser's mysterious history had subjected him, accounts, 
in some measure, for the extraordinary acuteness of 
scent which he possessed. Among other facts it is re- 
lated of him that, at some distance, he could distinguish 
apple, pear, and other fruit trees by the smell of their 
leaves. The most astonishing examples, however, of acute- 
ness in the perception of odours are, in civilised life, to 
be found among those whose loss of an important sense 
like sight has obliged them to seek compensation in the 
increased refinement of the others. Thus the blind 
deaf-mute, James Mitchell, is said to have possessed, 
besides a remarkable keenness of scent in general, the 
peculiar faculty of discovering by smell, not only the 
presence of a stranger in a room, but also the position 
in which he stood ; * and he is even said to have formed 
some notion of character by this sense, t Another blind 
and deaf mute, Julia Brace, who is described as possess- 
ing a fine physical organisation, furnishes perhaps the 
most astonishing instance on record of acute scent. In 
fact, according to Dr. Howe's report, " smell seems to 
be the sense on which she most relies. She smells at 
everything which she can bring within range of the 
sense; and she has come to perceive odours utterly 

* Dugald Stewart's Works, Vol. iv., pp. 314-316 (Hamilton's 
edition). 

+ Ibid., p. 335, note. 



1 36 Psychology. 

insensible to other persons. When she meets a person 
whom she has met before, she instantly recognises him 
by the smell of his hand or of his glove. If it be a 
stranger, she smells his hand ; and the impression is so 
strong that she can recognize him long after by smelling 
his hand, or even his glove, if just taken off. . . . 
She was employed in sorting the clothes of the pupils 
after they came out of the wash, and could distinguish 
those of each friend. If half a dozen strangers should 
throw each one* his glove into a hat, and they were 
shaken up, Julia will take one glove, smell it, then smell 
the hand of each person, and unerringly assign each 
glove to its owner." * 

The intellectual element involved in the perceptions of 
this sense explains the figurative applications of smell, 
scent, odour, perfume, aroma, bouquet, fragrant, redolent, 
and synonymous words in other languages. The word 
sagacious involves a figure derived from smell ; and that 
is a suggestive figure also, which says of a laboured style, 
that it " smells of the lamp." 

The intellectual superiority of smell to taste may not 
be at once obvious ; but a brief review of what is implied 
in the facts already cited will make the superiority evi- 
dent. Without referring again to the associations and 
comparisons that are, of course, involved in all percep- 
tions, it may be observed that — 

I. Smells are more easily compared than tastes both in 
presentation and in representation. 

1. The sense of smell is not cloyed so soon as that of 
taste. This may be partly due to the finer form of the 



* Dr. Howe, in the Forty -third Report of the Massachussetts 
Asylum for the Blind, quoted in Maudsley's Physiology of the 
Mind, p. 257 



Perception 137 

agency by which the organ is stimulated. While taste 
can be excited only by comparatively gross masses of 
liquid or solid food, odorous bodies act by means of 
practically imponderable particles. The result is, that 
the organ obtains more rapid relief from its stimulants; 
and they can, therefore, be distinguished even in some- 
what close succession. 

2. Odours are also capable of being more distinctly 
represented ; and, accordingly, they enter much more ex- 
tensively into the general stock of ideas, with which the 
mind is furnished. This will appear in illustrating 

II. The associability of odours, which is likewise higher 
than that of tastes. For, as Dngald Stewart has justly 
observed, "the conspicuous place, which the sensations 
of smell occupy in the poetical language of all nations, 
shows how easily and naturally they ally themselves with 
the refined operations of the Fancy, and with the moral 
emotions of the heart."* The superior associability of 
odours implies that they are at once more suggestible 
and more suggestive. 

1. They are suggested, not only with greater distinct- 
ness, but with quicker readiness. This is indicated by 
the frequency with which odours enter into the imagery 
of all literature ; for that implies that they are readily re- 
vived by any association. 

" O it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour, "f 

* Works, Vol. iv., p. 330, note (Hamilton's edition), 
t Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 1. Most editors have substituted 
"south" for "sound." Compare the passage in Milton's Comus : 
"At last a soft and solemn-breathing sound 
Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes 
And stole upon the air." 



138 Psychology. 

Such similes imply a kind of comparison which we 
should scarcely dream of looking for in connection with 
tastes. 

2. But the superior associability of odours is perhaps 
more strikingly exhibited in their suggestiveness. It has 
been already mentioned that James Mitchell used to dis- 
cern by smell the position of a person in a room. This 
is analogous to the perception exhibited by any person 
of ordinary sensibility, who, on being surprised by an 
odour, hunts out the source from which it comes. It is 
evident, therefore, that, in the perception of externality, 
smell accomplishes what taste cannot do; it takes 
us beyond our own organism, and in suggesting 
the distance or direction of an odorous body, it 
gives a perception of abstract space. But vaster asso- 
ciations than those of mere locality are easily formed 
with smell. In The Autocrat of the £?-eakfast Table Dr. 
Holmes has, in his own charming way, illustrated how 
persons, events, scenes of a distant past may be suddenly 
recalled by a slight half-forgotten odour ; and most men, 
who have reflected on the subject, will acknowledge that 
the illustration accords with their experience. The 
emotional associations of smell will be noticed more 
appropriately in the next part of this book. It has been 
well said, therefore, by Rousseau, in contrasting taste and 
smell, that " taste is the only sense which has nothing to 

say to the imagination Odours excite the 

imagination more than the sense, and affect us, not so 
much by what they furnish as by what they lead us to 
expect."* 

There is thus a certain aesthetic quality in odours, 
which was sought in vain in tastes. This is due, of 

* Emile, Livre ii., near the end. 



Perception. *39 

course, to that refinement which, as already explained, 
consists in the ability to rise beyond the merely sensuous 
act. Such refinement, however, has not only an aesthetic, 
but a moral aspect, as will appear more fully in the 
third Part of this Book. The consciousness, raised 
beyond the sensation of the moment into a permanent 
relation, is delivered from bondage to a momentary 
impulse, becomes capable of determination by thought ; 
so that there is not in smell the intrinsic tendency, that 
there is in taste, to enslave the will to sensuous 
indulgence. 

§ 3. — Perceptions of Touch* 

Here there is a great advance in capacity for know- 
ledge, and that especially in perceptions that involve 
the relations of space. The acuteness of tactual 
perception varies in different individuals, and even in the 
same individual at different times ; for it depends on the 
use that has been made of the hands. This is evident, 
not only for the general reason that all perceptions are 
developed by practice, but for the special reason that the 
sensibility of the fingers is necessarily affected by the use 
to which they have been put. It is a provision of nature 
for the protection of the sensitive true skin and the 
adjacent tissues, that any part of the body exposed to 
rough hard contacts developes a thicker cuticle. This, 
however, necessarily blunts the sensibility of the part so 
protected. It is, therefore, easily understood why we 
associate a hardened hand with rough manual labour, 
and never expect from it any power of delicate manipula- 
tion. On the other hand, a soft skin is usually combined 
with a corresponding fineness of touch. 

The perceptions of touch may be divided in accord- 
ance with the two main varieties of tactual sensation, 



140 Psychology. 

which were seen to depend on different degrees of 
pressure, and on distinctness in the points of pressure. 
Both of these forms of touch were shown to be ordinarily 
associated with muscular sensations. All the common 
perceptions of touch, therefore, are in reality muscular 
perceptions as well. In so far as any idea of movement 
is involved, the perception is based almost entirely on 
muscular sensibility ; but the sense of touch is necessarily 
called into play in associating the movement with an ex- 
traorganic body in contact with the skin. Accordingly, 
in analysing tiie perceptions of touch, it must always be 
understood, even when it is not explicitly stated, that 
muscular perceptions are involved. 

(A) The perception of different degrees of pressure \ 
though ordinarily due to the assistance of the muscular 
sense, is still to some extent a perception of touch ; and 
it has been already observed that the evperiments of 
Weber tend to show that the sensibility of the skin to 
separate points is a fair standard of its sensibility to 
different degrees of pressure. Thus the finger-tips can 
discriminate 20 oz. from iq'2 oz., while the obtuse fore- 
arm requires a difference of 20 oz. from 18*7 oz. before 
it can be perceived. 

In ordinary life a valuable perception connected with 
this sensibility is the delicacy which the physician 
acquires in " feeling " the pulse of a patient. The most 
common perceptions of this sort, however, are probably 
those implied in the accuracy with which tools may be 
handled ; but as these perceptions involve a peculiar 
complication arising from the use of a tool, it will 
be convenient to reserve them for subsequent ex- 
planation. If we leave the ordinary perceptions of 
human life, the blind will furnish many extra- 
ordinary examples of acuteness in the perception of 



Perception. 141 

which we are speaking. Thus the celebrated blind and 
deaf mute, Laura Bridgman, distinguishes her friends by 
the touch of their hands ; and in this way she can 
retain the memory of a hand for years. She has also 
been accustomed to conjecture the degree of a visitor's 
intelligence by the muscular tonicity or movement of his 
hand, and at an early period she learnt to detect the 
hand of an idiot by its peculiar flabbiness.* Dugald 
Stewart cites instances of blind men who could feel their 
approach to a solid obstacle by the pulse of the air on 
the face.f It does not, indeed, seem necessary to be 
blind in order to acquire the perception. Many persons, 
while walking in the dark, have been prevented from 
dashing against some object in the way by a peculiar 
feeling which they may not have been able to explain. 
Yet the explanation is not far to seek. In walking we 
push before us a column of air, as a vessel, moving 
through the water, raises a wave at its bow. The wave 
of the atmosphere, which we bear before us, rolls on 
undisturbed till it strikes some resisting body, when it 
surges back upon us ; and with the attention unusually 
strained to catch the slightest warning of an obstacle, it 
is not unintelligible that the increased beat of the air 
should be felt upon the face. J 

These perceptions of touch, however, must not be 



* Mind for April, 1879, p. 162. 

+ Works, Vol. iv., p. 304, note (Hamilton's edition). 

% Mr. Levy claims for blind men a peculiar sensibility in the face, 
which he calls the Facial Sense [Blindness and the Flind, pp. 
64-8.) Though Maudsley seems to recognise the claim {Physiology 
of the Mind, pp. 213-4), yet such recognition is premature while 
the claim has not been subjected to the test of scientific experiment. 
It seems not improbable that the Facial Sense may resolve itseli 
mainly into the perception explained in the text. 



\\2 Psychology. 

supposed to be intuitions. Like all other perceptions, 
they are products of association and comparison ; they 
are efforts of intelligence to interpret various sensations 
of touch by connecting them with the various modes of 
pressure from which they arise. For these sensations 
may be due to varying weights, to hardness and softness, 
or to some peculiarity in the figure of a body, causing 
one part of its surface to press more strongly than 
another. All perception of such facts is the result of an 
intellectual process, — of association and comparison. 
This may be made evident by one or two simple experi- 
ments. These experiments are taken from a class of 
phenomena, which may be called illusory perceptions, 
and which are of great psychological value for the light 
they throw on the processes of intelligence. They show, 
that once an idea has been associated with some 
sensation, it may at any time be suggested by the 
sensation, even when it represents no corresponding 
reality. It is thus seen that the reality is not revealed by 
a direct intuition, but is simply suggested as the result of 
a previous association. 

Our first experiment illustrates the suggestiveness of 
touches. It is evident that a convex surface, when 
drawn across the hand, tends to press more strongly in 
the middle than at the extremities, while the opposite is 
the case with concave surfaces. These inequalities 
of surface, therefore come to be associated with the 
varying degrees of pressure which they produce. Now, 
if a plane surface is drawn over the hand of a person 
blindfolded, it will appear convex or concave, according 
as the pressure is increased or diminished towards the 
centre, the differences of pressure suggesting irresistibly 
the convexity or concavity, with which they are usually 
associated. 



Perception. 143 

Another illusory perception illustrates the suggestibility 
of tactual sensations. Heavy bodies, like the common 
metals, are usually colder than the skin ; and therefore 
heaviness in a body comes to be associated with the 
feeling of its being cold. It is evidently a result of this 
association, that, if two bodies of equal weight, but un- 
equal temperatures, are held in the hands, the colder 
appears the heavier.* This illusion is illustrated by 
another which is based on a similar association, — an 
association, namely, between weight and metallic lustre. 
It is told of Dr. Pearson, that, when he first received on 
his finger a globule of potassium which had been pro- 
duced by Sir H. Davy's battery, he exclaimed, " Bless 
me, how heavy it is ! " Many persons, influenced by the 
same association, must have felt a disappointment 
approaching to a sort of insipidity, in handling the lighter 
metals. In fact, any light substance like a soft wood, 
coated with a successful imitation of metallic lustre, 
suggests a heaviness, which we are amusingly disappointed 
not to feel. 

(B) In the perception of distinct points, touch is 
usually combined with muscular sense by passing the 
finger-tips over the surface examined ; and this is what 
commonly is understood by "feeling " a body. Appar- 
ently the friction thus caused excites the papillae more 
vigorously, while the movement, with minute bodies at 
least, avoids the insensitive spots of the skin, and at the 
same time varies the impression produced. In this way 

* Professor Bain ascribes this illusion to " the depressing effect 
of cold " ( The Senses and the Intellect, p. 172, 3d. ed. ). This means, 
I presume, that cold lowers the muscular energy, and demands 
therefore a greater strain in sustaining a weight. To this it is an 
objection, that only an extreme cold has this effect ; moderate cold 
is stimulating. 



144 Psychology. 

great delicacy may often be acquired in perceiving 
minute differences in the structure of surfaces and the 
texture of stuffs. It is by this delicate perception that 
the clothier detects the quality of a cloth, the miller and 
flour-inspector determine the grades of flour. Marvellous 
to others, and perhaps inexplicable to himself, is the 
accuracy with which a bank-teller detects the presence of 
a counterfeit among a thousand notes that are passing 
rapidly through his fingers. An astonishing illustration 
of the increased sensibility which may be given to touch 
by the concentration of intelligent attention upon its im- 
pressions, seems to be furnished by so-called thought- 
reading. The most distinguished of recent performers 
in this art, assures us that he pretends to no immediate 
clairvoyance of another person's thoughts, but that in his 
case thought-reading is simply " an exalted perception of 
touch." * 

But here again it is among the blind that we look for 
the most extraordinary instances of acute perception. It 
is asked in an old play : — 

11 Whose hand so subtle he can colours name, 
If he do wink and touch 'em ? " t 

Nevertheless some of the blind are said to be capable of 
distinguishing colours by touch. This would mean that 
surfaces, which to sight produce sensations of different 
colours, reveal to touch also a perceptible difference : 
and this is a priori not inconceivable ; for the peculiar 
structure of a surface, which makes it reflect only certain 
rays of light, and absorb all the rest, may, in some cases 

* See an interesting article on A Thought-reader 'j Experiences, 
by Stuart C. Cumberland, in the Nineteenth Century for December, 
1886, especially pp. £78, 884. 

t Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of Malta, Act i., Scene i. 



Perception. 1 45 

at least, be perceptible to a delicate touch. Still the 
possession of this perception has been denied by some 
who claim large opportunities of observation. * 

Nevertheless touch does at times acquire powers that 
are quite as wonderful. One of the most common and 
useful applications of an educated touch among the 
blind at the present day is the reading of a raised type. 
Laura Bridgman, we are told, " estimates the age of her 
visitors by feeling the wrinkles about their eyes, and tells 
the frame of mind of her friends by touching their faces, 
nearly as accurately as a seeing person could do." f In 
fact, when combined with muscular sensibility and aided 
by hearing, touch can compensate for the loss of sight to 
a degree which would be incredible, were it not 
authenticated by daily observations and unexceptionable 
evidence. In the annals of the blind, therefore, we 
have numerous examples of men and women who, in 
spite of their defect, have pursued with success, not only 
various branches of science, but also various industrial 
occupations, which must have involved a wonderful 
delicacy of touch. J 

But for all men the most common and most important 
perceptions of this sense are those which refer to the 
separateness of different points, and which involve there- 
fore the three dimensions of space, — linear, plane, and 
cubical extension. All those perceptions, which relate 
to the magnitude, figure, distance, and situation of bodies, 

* See Mrs. Lamson's Life and Education of Laura Bridgman, 
p. 60 ; Quarterly Review for October, 1865. On the other side, see 
Carpenter's Human Physiology, § 738 ; and Todd and Cowman's 
Physiology, p. 376 (Amer. ed.). 

t Mind for April, 1879, p. 162. 

X Interesting information on these points will be found in Levy's 
Blindness and the Blind, especially pp. 336 — 372. 



146 Psychology. 

come under this head; for all these attributes simply 
mean the distance of different points from one another 
in different directions. Greater or less magnitude implies 
the greater or less distances between the extreme points 
of a body ; figure is merely an expression for the distance 
at which the different points in the outline or surface of 
a body stand apart. In these perceptions it must not be 
supposed that touch reveals absolute dimensions. This 
supposition it is necessary to guard against; for in 
ordinary thought, and even among older psychologists, it 
is a common representation that tangible, as distinguished 
from visible, dimensions are the real dimensions of 
bodies, and that therefore the sense of touch corrects, by 
reference to reality, the illusory appearances presented 
by sight. This view, however, was exposed long ago by 
Berkeley, and has been thoroughly dispelled by the more 
accurate examination of tactile perceptions inaugurated 
in those experiments of Weber which were described 
above.* It is now known that the perception of dimen- 
sion, as well as the perception of different degrees of 
pressure, is due to association and comparison. Indeed 
the philosopher, who was probably in modern times the 
greatest representative of the doctrine which holds that 
we have an intuitive perception of external reality, is 
quite as explicit as any other in denying any perception 
of extension in its real or absolute magnitude.! 

To illustrate this let us take the perception of magni- 
tude. Is there any absolute magnitude revealed to touch ? 
On the contrary, the tangible magnitude of a tody 
depends on the part of the organism with which it is in 
contact. It has been already observed that at some 



* Book i., Part i., Chapter ii., § 4. 

t Sir W. Hamilton in his edition of Reid's Works, pp. 88 r — 2. 



Perception. 147 

parts of the skin the points of a pair of compasses are felt 
to be distinct only when they are placed between two and 
three inches apart, while they can be distinguished by 
the tip of the forefinger when separated only by one 
twelfth of an inch, and even at the half of that distance 
by the tip of the tongue. As a result of this, two fixed 
points appear to be more distant when felt by a sensitive 
than when felt by an obtuse part of the skin. If the 
two points, therefore, are drawn from the soft part of the 
arm over the palm to the finger-tips, they appear to 
separate ; while they seem to approach if drawn in the 
opposite direction. Consequently, a body impresses us 
as being of greater magnitude when touched by a more 
acute part of the organism. A familiar illustration of 
this is the fact, that a tooth, when touched by the 
tongue, appears larger than when touched by the finger. 
We should commonly express this by saying that the 
tooth appears larger than it really is \ for our ideas of 
real magnitude are connected mainly with the special 
organ of touch, the finger-tips. But the unaided 
sensibility gives us no absolute standard of dimensions ; 
and that is the reason why we are obliged to adopt 
independent instruments of measurement. 

Take, again, the perception of the situation of bodies. 
This perception depends on the relative situations of the 
different parts of the skin that are touched. Now, the 
natural situations of these different parts may be 
artificially altered ; and an illusory perception is the 
result, for suggestion follows the normal situation of the 
points of contact. Thus, if a pellet is placed between 
the two forefingers crossed, we seem to perceive, not one, 
but two bodies. The reason is, that the sides of the 
fingers touched cannot, in their natural position, be 
touched by a single body at the same time ; and there- 



148 Psychology. 

fore the simultaneous touch of both by the pellet 
suggests irresistibly the idea of two separate bodies. 

Jt is interesting to observe a remarkable accession of 
faculty in this sense, at least when it is combined, as it 
usually is, with the muscular sense. When any object, 
such as a stick, is held by one end in the hand, while 
the other end is brought against any resisting body, the 
hand feels a corresponding tactile impression. By 
association with its cause in the resisting body we learn 
to interpret this impression, so that it seems to travel 
along the obje< t in the hand to the point where the 
resistance is made. The sense of touch is thus taught 
to bring within its ken bodies that are not in immediate 
contact with its organ ; it learns to perceive the exact 
position which such bodies occupy in space, as well as 
their mechanical properties, their roughness and smooth- 
ness, their hardness and softness, and their weight. We 
speak, in fact, of feeling or touching a distant body by 
means of a stick or other instrument held in the hand ; 
and the skill of the painter in handling his brush is often 
described as his touch. The value of this sort of touch 
for guidance to the blind is strikingly expressed by the 
ancient Greeks in the myth of the blind Teiresias 
receiving from Athena the gift of a staff, by which he was 
able to direct his movements as accurately as if he had 
been restored to sight. But for all men the vast 
extension of tactile and muscular perception by this 
means will be realised, when it is remembered that all 
the mechanical skill, which we owe to the use of tools, 
depends on the readiness with which the sensibility 
transfers itself to the point or edge of the tool used. It 
is by this transference of sensibility that man acquires all 
his marvellous accuracy in directing pen and pencil, 
chisel and knife, hatchet and sword, — in short, all the 



Perception. 149 

various instruments by which he has made natural forces 
subservient to the necessities and enjoyments of his life. 

By this extension of the sphere of tactile perception it 
has been ingeniously suggested thrt we may explain the 
fashion of carrying canes, of wearing large head-dresses, 
and other ornamental additions to the person, as if by 
such means the body were felt to expand in its propor- 
tions.* In this connection may be mentioned an 
equally ingenious explanation of the various actions 
which have been adopted as expressions of respect or 
humiliation in presence of a superior, — bowing, kneeling, 
uncovering the head or the feet, — as all involving the 
same idea, that of a diminution of the person.! 

It needs but few words, beyond the exposition already 
given of tactile perceptions, to prove the intellectual 
superiority of touch as compared with taste or smell. 
That exposition has shown that the sensations of this 
sense admit of being more clearly identified and 
distinguished both in presentation and representation. 

1. That the actual sensations can be more easily 
compared, must be evident from the fact that they may 
be discriminated, not only when occurring in rapid 
succession, but even when they are simultaneous. It is 
this discrimination of simultaneous touches, that enables 
us to perceive distinct points, and thus to attain all 
those perceptions which imply extension in its different 
dimensions. 

2. It is equally evident that tactile sensations are more 
distinctly representable. A touch can be clearly revived 
in memory, and even referred in memory to the precise 



* Lotze, Mikrokosmus, Vol. i., pp. 196 — 7. 

+ D. Stewart's Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, Vol, 
I, p. 248, note (Hamilton's edition). 



150 Psychology* 

spot on the periphery where it was originally felt. It 
must be this circumstance mainly that has led to the 

genera] use of skin inflictions in the discipline of sentient 
beings; for it is obviously of prime importance in such 
discipline, that the pains, intended to deter from any act, 
should be at once such as are easily remembered, and 
such as are easily associated with the act, from which 
they are to deter. A remarkable proof of the distinct 
hold which touches may retain on the memory is 
furnished by not a few of the blind, after an interval of 
many wars, recognising an old acquaintance immediately 
by the grasp of his hand. Gough, the blind botanist, 
had in his old age a rare plant put into his hands. After 
a brief examination he gave it its name, observing at the 
same time that he had met with only one specimen of 
the plant before, and that was fifty years ago.* 

This leads to the additional observation, that touches 
are as easily associable as they are comparable, — that they 
are at once readily suggested, and powerfully suggestive. 
They fill, therefore, a much larger place, than either 
tastes or odours, in the memory and imagination of men. 
It is thus that " the touch of a vanished hand " is in 
itself so clearly revivable, and, even as a mere revival, is 
endowed with such power to recall the thoughts and 
emotions, with which it has been associated. 

It might be expected, since touches can so readily 
form a vivid imagery, that they would enter extensively 
into the material of poetry ; and yet the poetic value 
assigned to them is usually insignificant. This may be 
partly due to the slight emotional value of touches — an 
aesthetic defect, of which we shall have occasion to speak 
again. But another explanation is to be found in the 



* The l.Qst Senses, by Dr, Kitto, p. 347 (Amer. e<i). 



Perception, I $ I 

fact, that a large portion of tactile perceptions go to 
enrich the perceptions of sight, and consequently become 
absorbed in these. All ideas of figure, size, situation, — 
all the ideas that involve extension, — are in the ordinary 
mind indissolubly associated with sight, though un- 
doubtedly derived in a large measure from tactile and 
muscular sensibility. But in those abnormal mental 
developments which, by reason of congenital blindness, 
have been unaided by sight, we can study more conveni- 
ently the separate contributions of touch to our 
intelligence ; and it is evident, from such a study, that 
the place, ordinarily occupied by visual ideas, is 
represented in such minds by ideas derived from touch 
and the muscular sense. As a result of this it appears 
that, among the congenitally blind, poetical ideas are 
associated with touches quite as naturally as, among the 
seeing, they are attached to sights and sounds. Thus 
a man who was born blind writes : — " I take a strange 
and indescribable delight in passing my hands gently 
over highly - polished surfaces, especially if they are 
curved or undulating. Hard, rough surfaces, like those 
of sandpaper or unpolished metal, are extremely dis- 
agreeable to the touch. Angular figures, with fuzzy, 
glutinous, or adhesive surfaces, excite in the blind 
feelings of disgust, kindred, perhaps, to those experienced 
by the seeing, when the eye falls upon grim and dingy- 
coloured objects ; while spherical bodies, with soft, 
smooth, or glossy exteriors, never fail to create the most 
pleasing sensations and impart ideas of fascinating 
beauty. Consequently, with these qualities, and sweet 
sounds, we associate our conceptions of beautiful 
colours."* The experience of Dr. Moyes was identical. 

* Beauties and Achievements of the Blind, by W. Artmann and 
L. V. Hall. 



152 Psychology. 

11 Polished surfaces, meandering streams, and gentle 
declivities, were the figures by which he expressed his 
ideas of beauty ; rugged rocks, irregular points, and 
boisterous elements, furnished him with expressions of 
terror and disgust."* 

§ 4. — Perceptions of Hearing. 

These perceptions may be conveniently grouped in 
two classes ; for some of them are founded on the 
general sensibility of the ear to all sorts of sound, others 
on its special sensibility to tones. The former may be 
described as perceptions of space, the latter as percep- 
tions of relative pitch and quality. 

(A.) With regard to the auditory perceptions of space, 
it seems scarcely necessary to say, that they are not 
immediate intuitions, through the ear, of spatial relations. 
Sound in itself implies no idea of space, of here and 
there, of long and short, of far and near. Sounds are 
sensations, differing in intensity, pitch, and quality, but 
indicating no relation whatever to the dimensions of 
space. These dimensions, in short, however they may 
be known, cannot be heard, any more than they can be 
tasted or smelled. How, then, do we learn to perceive 
space by sound ? We acquire this perception in the 
same way as we acquire any other, by association and 
comparison. 

This perception, as already remarked, is based on the 
sensibility of the ear to sound in general. Now, the pro- 
perty which all sounds possess in common is intensity, 
and different sounds can be compared — discriminated — 
in respect of their different intensities. Moreover, the 

* The Lost Senses, by Dr. Kitto, pp. 342-3 (Amer. ed,) t 



Perception. 153 

different intensities become associated in experience with 
different relations in space.' Accordingly, the intensity 
of a sound, after a certain length of association, forms a 
sign of the spatial relation with which it has been 
associated. There are two such relations which are thus 
made known — distance and direction. 

I. The association, which forms the perception of 
distance^ has been already mentioned. It is founded on 
the physical law, that the sound-waves in the atmosphere 
diminish in breadth, and therefore impinge with less 
force on the ear, the farther they have travelled. As a 
result of this, loudness becomes a common sign of 
proximity, faintness of distance. The association, 
indeed, is not absolutely invariable ; but it is uniform 
enough to make the suggestion of the fact signified by 
the intensity of a sound almost as instantaneous as an 
immediate intuition. In those instances in which the 
familiar association is interrupted, there is usually some 
collateral circumstance which prevents us from being 
deceived. In the case of thunder and artillery, for 
example, we have generally learnt, from the familiar 
character of the sounds, that there is not necessarily any 
connection between their loudness and the close proxi* 
mity of their source ; on the other hand, the recognition 
of a sound as a whisper dissociates its faintness from the 
idea of distance. Still we are deceived often by the 
habit of this association, oftenest probably by a faint 
sound suggesting irresistibly a remote sonorous body. In 
fact, the art of the ventriloquist, apart from his histrionic 
power and his skill in mimicking various voices, aims at 
producing an illusory perception of hearing by imitation 
of the signs with which we have been accustomed to 
associate different distances. 

II. The perception of the direction of a sound, that it, 



154 Psychology, 

of the situation of a sonorous body in reference to our 
own position in space, is also due to the discrimination 
of different intensities of sounds; but it implies that we 
discriminate the intensities of the sensations in the two 
ears. The ear, which is nearest to a sonorous body, will 
receive its sound with greater force ; and from this fact 
we learn to recognise the direction in which the sound 
comes. 

Here, again, in mature intelligence the process becomes 
so rapid from long association, that we fail to analyse it 
in ordinary perceptions. But the process may yet be 
detected in two eiicumstances. (i.) When we are un- 
certain about the direction of a sound, as we must be if 
its cause is right above or beneath, right in front or 
behind, we keep tentatively altering the position of the 
head, till we satisfy ourselves by catching the sound more 
strongly on one ear. (2.) It is the experience of persons 
who have lost the sensibility of one ear, that they lose 
also, to a large extent, the power of perceiving the direc 
tion of sounds. 

Still there is ground for believing that this perception 
has been exaggerated, so far as it is supposed to be in- 
dependent on any extraneous knowledge of the situation 
of audible bodies. When, for example, you are in a 
company of several persons, and are able to turn without 
hesitation to each whenever his voice is heard, your per- 
ception of the direction of the voice is, in all probability, 
to be ascribed mainly to your previous acquaintance with 
the peculiar tones of the various persons in the company, 
and with the various positions which they respectively 

occupy. 

Though it is common to consider geometrical relations 
alone, like distance and direction, among these percep- 
tions of hearing, yet sometimes physical properties also 



Perception. 1 5 $ 

are associated with sound, and thus perceived by its 
means. This is the case, for example, with the weight 
of bodies, which is apt to show a certain correspondence 
with the intensity of the sounds they produce. We thus 
distinguish easily the tread of an adult from the light 
footstep of a child, we detect at once the heavy foot of a 
man bearing a burden, and we can tell whether the 
vehicle which we hear passing down the street is a loaded 
waggon or an empty cart. Perceptions of this sort are, 
of course, peculiarly frequent and acute among the blind ; 
and their appreciation of minute differences in the 
intensity and pitch of sounds forms one of the chief 
guides in threading their way through crowded thorough- 
fares. 

(B) The value of the musical perceptions of the ear is 
evinced in the fact, that they form the basis at once of 
articulate speech and of the fine art of music. 

1. Articulate speech depends on the power of dis- 
criminating the musical properties of sound. This is 
evident from an examination of the vocal organ of man, 
as well as of the elementary sounds, whose combinations 
form his spoken language. 

i. The organ of the human voice is, in the strictest 
sense, a musical instrument of the reed sort. The 
structures, which play the part of reeds, are the vocal 
cords, — two elastic ligaments, which are stretched across 
the upper part of the larynx, and are thrown into vibra- 
tion by the expired breath. In fact, in singing, the 
organ of the voice is used for strictly musical purposes. 

2. The articulate sounds, produced by this organ, 
have from ancient times been divided into two classes, — 
consonants and vowels. 

(a) The consonants — literae consonantes — are not, 
indeed, independent sounds ; they can bo sounded only 



1 56 Psychology. 

along with the vowels. They are simply checks on the 
vowel sounds, produced by obstruction of the breath 
after it has issued from the larynx ; and the difference of 
the consonants depends on the point where the obstruc- 
tion is formed. Is the breath checked just as it leaves 
the larynx by a contraction at the top of the throat ? we 
have a guttural. Is it allowed to pass further, and 
arrested only by a pressure of the tongue against the 
teeth ? a dental Is the result. Is it not stopped till we 
close the lips upon it? then they produce a labial. Now, 
although to the philologist tracing the modifications of a 
word, or to the elocutionist anxious about distinct 
articulation, the consonants form the most important 
constituents of speech, yet phonetically they are not 
essential. A word may be formed without a consonant, 
but not without a vowel. 

(/>) The vowels — literae vocales — are independent 
sounds, formed by the current of breath being modified 
by the configuration of the mouth. A change in the 
configuration of the mouth forms it into a practically new 
instrument by giving it a different resonance ; that is to 
say, the mouth becomes thus tuned to a different key, 
and adapted to resound tones that are in harmony with 
it. The result is that with each new configuration of the 
mouth different overtones are brought into prominence ; 
and consequently the vowels are distinguished from one 
another by the quality of their tone. It is not necessary 
here to enter into details on this subject ; these will be 
found in Helmholtz's great work, which has been already 
mentioned.* 

Of course it must be borne in mind that the sounds 
of the voice are merely the raw formless materials of 

* Lehre von den Tonempfindiuigen % pp. 163-180. 



Perception, 1 57 

speech. That there is a strong animal instinct to use 
vocal sounds for the expression of mind is evinced in the 
inarticulate cries of beasts and the musical notes of birds. 
A very striking manifestation of this instinct is the fact 
that Laura Bridgman, who was blind and deaf almost 
from her birth, produces vocal sounds which she can 
feel merely as muscular sensations in the larynx, and 
that she associates these with different objects, animate 
and inanimate, in the same way as we associate words 
with such objects as their names or signs.* The raw 
materials — the mere sounds — of articulate speech can 
be reproduced even by many of the lower animals, like 
the parrot, which have a powerful instinct of mimicry in 
this direction. But the essential form of language — the 
syntax or intelligent arrangement of articulate sounds — 
is never acquired by any of the lower animals. Syntax 
implies the connection of different thoughts as factors of 
a larger thought — the connection of different parts of 
speech as forming by their relation one organic whole. 
It is simply, therefore, a modification of that general 
action of intelligence which consists in association and 
comparison ; but as quite distinct from any perception 
of hearing, it does not require further consideration here. 
The perception of articulate sounds, though a more 
humble, is still an essential part of the faculty of speech; 
and, humble though it be in comparison with the other, 
it involves a somewhat elaborate intellectual effort. The 
labour, accumulated in the effort, is disguised by the 
easy rapidity with which it is performed after long 
practice; but it is partially revealed to any one who sets 
about educating his ear to follow a foreign speech. The 



* Mrs. Lamson's Life and Education of Laura Bridgman, pp. 
xvi.-xvii., 61-2, 84. 



158 Psychology. 

first impression of a foreign tongue is an unintelligible 
jabber ; and it is a significant philological fact, that in 
many languages the words used commonly to denote a 
foreigner, like the Greek barbaros and the Teutonic 
welsch, seem to have expressed originally the idea of 
babbling or talking inarticulately.* 

In fact, not a few phenomena in language are to be 
explained by the difficulty of catching distinctly the 
sound of unfamiliar words. Occasionally, for example, 
when two words are commonly used together, the final 
consonant of the one coalesces with the beginning of the 
other, or the initial consonant of the latter is attracted to 
the termination of the preceding. Of the former 
phenomenon vv? have examples in a newt for an eft, a 
nickname for an ekename ; of the other, examples occur 
in an adder for a nadder, un orange for un narange 
(Spanish naranja from the Arabic naranj). Old manu- 
scripts, at a time when spelling was less an object of care, 
and printing had not made orthography familiar, show 
numerous examples of such confusion. Another common 
confusion occurs when a word imported from a foreign 
language resembles the sound of a word in the language 
into which it is introduced. The familiar word is then 
made to do duty for the unfamiliar, even though the two 
may have no connection in etymology or meaning. Of 
this there is a well known example in the vulgar corrup- 
tion of asparagus into sparruwgrass ; and numerous 
additional illustrations may be found in works on the 
science of language. 

II. The fine art of music is of course built up on the 
musical sensibility of the ear. It implies a power of 



See Renan, De torigine du langage, pp. 177-181. 



Perception. 159 

perceiving both of the musical properties of tone, — their 
pitch and their quality. 

1. The perception of quality forms a considerable 
element of musical gratification; and this property, as we 
have seen, depends on the overtones by which a tone is 
accompanied. Simple tones, like those of a tuning-fork, 
which are nearly or altogether unmodified by overtones, 
being deficient in any pronounced quality, are felt to be 
weak, though agreeably soft. Those tones, again, in 
which the lower overtones, up to about the sixth, are 
most prominent, such as the tones of a piano or the open 
pipes of an organ, produce a richer, grander clang; 
while those, in which the higher overtones prevail, such 
as the tones of most reed-instruments, are harsh in 
quality, though valuable for some musical effects. The 
reason of this difference is, that the higher overtones 
form discords, the lower form concords, with the funda- 
mental tone. It appears, therefore, that the appreciation 
of quality is akin to the appreciation of harmony ; and 
this is a subject which will be immediately discussed. 

2. The perception of relative pitch may apply either to 
consecutive or to simultaneous tones. 

(a) In the case of consecutive tones the succeeding 
tone must be such as to follow without violent shock 
upon the preceding. This agreeable relation of successive 
tones is melody. To understand the nature of this 
relation, it must be borne in mind that, in a succession 
of tones, each preceding tone is apt to linger, if not in 
sense, certainly in memory, after the succeeding has been 
struck ; and therefore a marked discord between the two 
tones would be disagreeable. This would be the case at 
least with the emphatic notes of a melody; and it seems 
that, in those airs which have been the delight of a people 
for generations, the emphatic notes are related by simple 



160 Psychology. 

and familiar concords. The nature, therefore, of a 
melodious succession of tones, like that of the quality of 
single tones, seems to point to the same source of auditory 
gratification, from which harmony derives its power. 

(b) We are thus brought to the consideration of 
harmony, that is, the musical or agreeable relation of 
simultaneous tones. The complete explanation of 
harmony involves three problems, only one of which is 
strictly psychological. 

(«) From physics harmony demands an account of its 
physical cause. This cause must be some peculiarity 
in the combination of the atmospheric vibrations pro- 
ducing the various tones that form a harmony. It is 
evident that different sound-waves, having a certain ratio, 
will coincide at regular intervals, while other combinations 
admit of no such coincidence. It is also evident that 
coincidences of this kind can be represented by the ratio 
between the numbers of the vibrations that produce the 
several tones of a harmony. A few of the more simple 
ratios are very obvious, and have long been familiar in 
music. Thus, when the vibrations of two tones stand in 
the ratio of 1:2, that is, when two tones at an interval 
of an octave are combined, each beat of the air producing 
the lower tone will coincide with every second beat 
producing the higher. A similar coincidence will also 
obviously result from such simple ratios as 1 : 3, 2 : 3, 
1 : 4, etc. But it is unnecessary here to go into details, 
which belong to acoustics and the theory of music. 

(,3) To physiology also a problem is offered by 
harmony, — the problem of explaining the peculiar 
organic action that is set up during an harmonious 
conbination of tones. Here we enter on a more obscure 
region, and must grope our way mainly by deduction 
from our general knowledge of the nature of nervous 



Perception. 161 

action. It is commonly held that the effect of coincident 
atmospheric vibrations upon the auditory nerve is to pro- 
duce a continuous nerve-current, while a discordant 
combination excites a confused set of intermittent shocks. 
The pleasantness of the one effect, and the unpleasantness 
of the other, will be considered in the next Part of this 
Book, when we come to discuss the nature of pleasure 
and pain. 

(7) But the physical and physiological aspects of 
harmony are noticed here mainly to avoid confounding 
them with its psychological aspect. To the psychologist 
harmony is a phenomenon in consciousness. The 
consciousness here is very largely emotional, but it 
contains a cognitional factor as well. This factor 
appears, of course, most distinctly where it is most fully 
developed, — in the mind of a cultivated musician. To 
such the consciousness of harmony is a perception of 
some sort of coalescence between the combining tones, 
while in discord there is a consciousness that the tones 
will not coalesce. In its intellectual aspect discord may 
therefore be compared with the consciousness arising 
from the presentation or representation of objects, so 
numerous and so dissimilar, that the intellect is baffled 
in the effort to comprehend them in one cognitive act ; 
and in its emotional aspect, as may appear more clearly 
in the sequel, discord may be classed with the more 
general feelings of distraction or confusion. 

To prevent misunderstanding, it may be observed in 
passing, that of course there are other factors in music 
besides the perception of tone. There is, for example, 
the cognition of time, of which it need only be said here 
that the sense of hearing is a pretty fair measurer.* 

* Time in music is essentially connected with metre and rhythn 
L 



1 62 Psychology. 

There is also the aesthetic consciousness, which is com- 
mon to music with the other fine arts. But the con- 
sciousness of time and of beauty opens up questions 
which can be discussed only at a later stage. 

It is scarcely necessary to insist on the intellectual 
rank of this sense, as it is obvious that sounds are among 
the most readily associated and the most distinctly 
compared of all sensations, (i.) Their associability, that 
is, their suggestiveness and suggestibility are strikingly 
illustrated in the familiar use of speech; for the under- 
standing of language implies that sounds have the power 
of instantaneously suggesting thoughts, as speaking im- 
plies that thoughts have the power of instantaneously 
suggesting sounds, as well as the muscular adjustments 
requisite for producing them. (2.) The comparability of 
sounds is also remarkable. We have already seen that, 
in succession, they must reach the number of about 
forty in a second before they become fused into one 
tone ; and the power of a cultivated ear to discriminate 
minute differences of pitch or quality is often marvellous. 
The leader of a large orchestra can at once detect a false 
note, and turn to the offending instrument, while a tuner 
must recognise any variation, even to a small fraction of 
a tone, from the pitch which he is seeking to restore.* 

With this high intellectual quality sounds have natur- 



in versification, and the dependence of these on hearing is evinced 
by the fact that, while blind men have produced the most delicate 
charms of poetical structure, the annals of the deaf contain no great 
poets. See Kitto's The Lost Senses, pp. 140 4, where the author 
gives an interesting account of his own experience of deafness. 

* Observations seem to show that a practised ear can detect a 
difference of pitch, when it depends merely on a fraction of a 
vibration. Wundt's Physiologisehe Psychologie, vol. i., p. 396 
^second ed.). 



Perception. 163 

ally entered very extensively into the materials of poetic 
art. Their artistic value, however, is most prominently 
exhibited in music ; but as the effect of music is chiefly, 
if not exclusively, emotional, this subject must be re- 
served for the next Part. 

§ 5. — Perceptions of Sight. 

It is by the agency of light, as we have seen, that the 
sense of sight receives its impressions ; and, conse- 
quently, by itself it can give us no information beyond 
what is involved in the sensations of light, — of pure light 
or of colour. But in mature life sight is the sense to 
which we commonly resort for most of our information 
regarding the external world, especially for such informa- 
tion as involves ideas of space, — the magnitude, figure, 
distance, and direction of bodies. There is, therefore, a 
more uniform association of these ideas with visual, sen- 
sations than with the sensations of any other sense. The 
association will be shown to be, in some instances, 
practically invariable, and therefore irresistibly and in- 
stantaneously suggestive. 

On this account, while it was comparatively easy to 
dissociate ideas of space from other sensations, it has 
been found more difficult to do so in the case of sight. 
Even in recent times attempts have been made to show 
that the unaided sight is capable of perceiving space, if 
not in all dimensions, at least in length and breadth. It 
is, therefore, advisable to adduce the evidence, on which 
it is now generally admitted that the eye, of itself, has no 
such perception. 

(A) We shall take first the case of plane extension. 
This perception need not detain us long. It may be a 
question whether an indefinite consciousness of extension 



164 Psychology. 

is not involved in the consciousness of light and colour : 
that is a problem which depends on the ultimate analysis 
of the idea of space. But whatever may be the solution 
of this problem, it is certain that definite extension in 
length and breadth can never be actually perceived by 
sight alone. Take, for illustration, one form of plane 
extension, the magnitude of a body, that is, the extent 
which it covers on the field of vision. It is a fact 
familiar even to the child, that to sight a body appears 
smaller or larger in proportion to its distance, and that 
therefore the illusions of visible magnitude have to be 
corrected by reference to other standards of measure- 
ment. Consequently, the experience of persons born 
blind, and afterwards restored to sight, — an experience of 
which a more explicit account will presently be given, — 
tends to show that at first they could form no definite 
notion regarding the magnitude of bodies from their 
visible appearance. Thus the patient of Dr. Franz could 
not understand the significance of perspective ; it seemed 
to him unnatural that the figure of a man in the fore- 
ground of a picture should be larger than that of 
a house or a mountain in the background. It is 
a singular circumstance, which it is difficult to ex- 
plain, but which is conclusive on the point under 
consideration, that both Franz's and Cheselden's 
patients, after the restoration of sight, saw for a 
time objects magnified, especially when in motion.* 

* This fact recalls a well-known trait ot the narrative in Mark's 
Gospel, viii., 24. The case of Cheselclen's patient was compli- 
cated by the curious fact, that one eye was cured before the other, 
and gave rise to this illusion. When the second eye was cured, 
objects appeared to it larger than to the first cured eye, though not 
so large as they had appeared to this eye immediately after its cure. 
I have discussed the problem of this magnification in a short 



Perception. 165 

From the same cause the variations in the apparent 
size of a body which form such a familiar fact to those 
endowed with sight, are unimaginable by the congtnitally 
blind; and thus Cheselden's patient could not under- 
stand how his mother could have a portrait of his father 
in her watch-case, which seemed to him as impossible as 
putting a bushel into a pint-measure. 

A similar inability is experienced in regard to the 
perception of figure, which is merely the outline of the 
extent covered by a body on the field of vision. Except 
in the case of a few objects with very simple outline, such 
as a sphere, the visible figure of a body varies with the 
point of view from which it is seen. Consequently, 
persons born blind, after being restored to sight, are 
unable for some time to distinguish by their visible 
appearance, even objects that are very different in form, 
and are obliged to have recourse to the familiar sensa- 
tions of touch and muscular sensibility. Thus Chesel,den 
tells of his patient, that " he knew not the shape of any- 
thing, nor any one thing from another, however different 
in shape or magnitude ; but upon being told what things 
were, whose form he before knew from feeling, he would 
carefully observe that he might know them again ; but 
having too many objects to learn at once, he forgot 
many of them ; and (as he said) at first learned to 
know, and again forgot a thousand things in a 
day. One particular only (though it may appear 
trifling) I will relate : Having often forgot which was 
the cat, and which the dog, he was ashamed to ask ; 
catching the cat (which he knew by feeling), he was 
observed to look at her stedfastly, and then setting her 

monograph in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for 
1883. 



1 66 Psychology. 

down, said, 'So, puss ! I shall know you another time.'" 
It may be added that Dr. Franz's patient was at first 
perplexed over the visible appearance of even simple geo- 
metrical figures, though he had made some progress in 
the study of geometry before his recovery of sight. 

These facts make it evident that the visual perception 
of any definite plane extension is not an immediate and 
original intuition of the mind through the sense of sight, 
but must be explained as the result of a mental process. 

(B) The same conclusion, however, is still more 
evident in the case of solid extension, which implies the 
third dimension of space, — depth, or distance from the 
eye. 

1. The impossibility of seeing this dimension may, in 
fact, be said to be indicated by the very nature of vision. 

i. To use a phrase of Berkeley's, distance is a line 
turned endwise to the eye. It is, therefore, only its end, 
not its length, that we see. Our condition may be 
illustrated by reference to a similar condition in the sense 
of touch. Were the end of a wire brought into contact 
with the hand of a person blind or blindfold, could he 
tell its length? It might be but a short knitting-needle ; 
it might be an Atlantic cable : the touch of the end would 
indicate no difference of length. So a ray of light may 
come from a neighbouring gas-lamp or from a star count- 
less millions of miles away ; it is merely the termination 
of the ray that strikes the eye. 

2. All parts of a scene, however near some, however 
remote others may be, are presented on the retina at the 
same elevation, precisely as they would be represented 
on canvas by a painter. There is, therefore, nothing in 
the structure or action of the eyes to indicate various 
distances. 

II. But it may be urged that such a priori arguments 



Perception. \6j 

are unsatisfactory, unless they are confirmed by facts. 
Indeed, however extraordinary it may appear in the face 
of these arguments, it will be shown in the sequel that, 
as far as can be judged from careful experiments on new- 
born animals of some species, these form accurate visual 
perceptions of distance and direction without requiring 
to go through any process of learning. But whatever 
explanation may be given of these observations on other 
animals, the experience of human life does not allow us 
to endow man with any such instinctive cognition. 

To prove this the most conclusive evidence is that of 
infants, though it cannot be obtained by direct testimony, 
but must be gathered from their actions. It has long 
been familiar to mothers and nurses that children require 
some weeks' experience before they learn to notice 
things. The meaningless gaze of an infant, even when 
striking objects, like a lamp, are passed before his eyes, 
has long been regarded as showing that he is incompe- 
tent at first to interpret his visual sensations. But for- 
tunately we are not left to the vague impressions of un- 
methodical observers ; for within the last few years the 
mental development of infancy has been made the sub- 
ject of numerous observations, conducted with the minute 
accuracy and precaution characteristic of modern science. 
From a large number of observations, directed specially 
to the development of visual perception, it appears that 
the child requires some weeks, or even months, to master 
the adjustments of the ocular muscles necessary to form 
a distinct retinal image, and that it is long after this 
power has been acquired before he can perceive by sight 
an inequality in the distance of objects. * 

* Die Seele des Kindes, by Dr. Preyer (Leipzig, 18S2), pp. 35-41. 
See especially the summary on p. 39. This work may be recom 



1 68 Psychology. 

This result of the observations made on infant life is 
happily confirmed in the most unequivocal manner by the 
experience of persons in maturer years who have been 
born blind, but afterwards restored to sight. A number 
of such cases have been recorded ; but probably the 
most important, certainly the most accessible to an 
English reader, are those of which the reports are pre- 
served in the PJiilosophical Transactions. * A selection 
of one or two passages from the first and the last of these 
reports will sufficiently indicate the conclusion to which 
they point. 

i. The earliest case, and the one most frequently cited, 
is that of a lad born with a cataract of an unusually 
opaque quality. He was about fourteen years of age 
when the cataract was removed by Cheselden. The re- 
port of this case has been already cited in connection 

mended as the latest, and probably the most complete, treatise on 
the infant-mind. Earlier works are mentioned by Wundt, Grund- 
ziige der Physiologischen Psychologic, Vol. ii., p. 218, note I, (2nd 
ed). The work of M. Perez on The First Three Years of Child- 
hood^ though earlier than that of Dr. Preyer, has recently (1885) 
appeared in an English translation. 

* The cases are these :— (1) Cheselden's, 1728 ; (2) Ware's, 1801, 
where there is reference to another (p. 389) ; (3) and (4) Home's 
two cases, which are of minor psychological interest, 1807 ; (5) 
Wardrope's, 1826; (6) Franz's, 1841. Another case is described in 
Nunneley's Organs of Visions (1838). p. 31. Additional cases are 
referred to by Helmholtz, Physiologische Optik, Vol. ii., p. 178 (2nd 
ed.) ; by Preyer, Die Scele des Kindes, p. 404. In making psycho- 
logical inferences from the data of these cases, it should never be 
forgotten that the patients were but imperfectly blind, all being able 
to perceive the difference of light and shade, and therefore the 
presence of objects before the eyes, while some could even vaguely 
distinguish colours. It should also be borne in mind, that the 
patients had all reached a somewhat mature notion of space by the 
use of the other senses, if not also by their imperfect vision. 



Perception. 169 

with the perception of plane extension. The following 
statements may now be adduced to show that the percep- 
tion of the third dimension of space through the newly 
recovered sense had to be gradually acquired : — " When 
he first* saw, he was so far from making any judgment 
about distances, that he thought all objects whatever 
touched his eyes (as he expressed it), as what he felt did 
his skin. . . . We thought he soon knew what 
pictures represented which were showed to him, but we 
found afterwards we were mistaken ; for about two months 
after he was couched, he discovered at once that they 
represented solid bodies, when, to that time, he con- 
sidered them only as parti-coloured plains, or surfaces 
diversified with variety of paints ; but even then he was 
no less surprised, expecting the pictures would feel like 
the things they represented, and was amazed when he 
found those parts, which by their light and shadow ap- 
peared now round and uneven, felt only flat like the, rest; 
and asked which was the lying sense, feeling or seeing." 
2. The other case to be cited is one in which superior 
accuracy seems to have been observed in making and 
reporting experiments. The patient was a young man, 
practically blind from birth, of good intelligence, well 
educated, and acquainted especially with geometrical 
figures. He was about eighteen years of age at the time 
of his cure. The report of the case was in after-life 
declared by the patient himself to be substantially 
correct.* After relating a number of interesting experi- 
ments, the report goes on : — " When the patient first 
acquired the faculty of sight, all objects appeared to him 
so near, that he was sometimes afraid of coming in con- 

* See a letter of Mr. Mahaffy's in the Athencznm for January 
22nd, 1881, where there is an interesting notice of the patient* 



lyo Psychology. 

tact with them, though they were in reality at a great 
distance from him. . . . If he wished to form an 
estimate of the distance of objects from his own person, 
or of two objects from each other, without moving from 
his place, he examined the objects from different points 
of view by turning his head to the right and to the left. 
Of perspective in pictures he had of course no idea ; he 
could distinguish the individual objects in a painting, but 
could not understand the meaning of the whole picture. 
. . . All objects appeared to him perfectly flat ; thus, 
although he very well knew by his touch that the nose 
was prominent, and the eyes sunk deeper in the head, 
he saw the human face only as a plane. . . . Even 
though he could see both near and remote objects very 
well, he would nevertheless continually have recourse to 
the use of the sense of touch."* 

It thus appears that the visual perception both of solid 
and of plane extension is gradually acquired ; and there- 
fore it is a problem for the psychologist to explain the 
process of acquisition. It will be convenient in this ex- 
planation to separate the two modes of extension. 

i. Extension in Depth. 

Here there are two conditions of perception so different 
that it is necessary to consider them apart. The one in- 
volves the use of both eyes ; the other does not. 

(A) Binocular vision affects the perception of depth 
only when objects are at no great distance ; for then the 
eyes must be turned in to see an object, and turned in 
the more, the nearer the object is. This will be evident 

* Phil, Trans, for 1 841, p. 66, 



Perception. Ijl 

from the accompanying diagram, in which E E represent 
the eyes, and Oi an object near, O2 an object more 




remote. Technically this fact is expressed by saying 
that the angle formed by the optic axes varies inversely 
as the distance. Consequently, since that angle dimin- 
ishes with increasing distance, it is obvious that, when an 
object is very remote, the optic axes must be nearly 
parallel. This produces two effects on our sensibility, 
which are of great significance in the perception of depth 
in space — one a muscular sensation arising from the ad- 
justment of the optic axes, the other a visual sensation 
determined by the different points of view from which the 
two eyes look at a near object. 

I. It has been already mentioned that the eyes are 
supplied with an elaborate muscular apparatus, enabling 
them to move in every direction. The muscular sensi- 
bility is of course excited in the movement of the eyes, 
as they are turned inwards or outwards to see objects 
near or more remote ; and the muscular sensations, thus 
invariably produced in adjusting the eyes to different 
distances, become uniformly associated with the different 
distances for which they are required. The result is 
that the distance associated with any particular adjust- 
ment of the eyes, is suggested irresistibly and instan- 
taneously, appearing in consciousness as if it were im- 
mediately perceived. 

This is no mere hypothetical explanation of the per- 



172 Psychology. 

ception of distance. It can be verified by the most 
satisfactory evidence. It is possible to alter the adjust- 
ment of the optic axes at pleasure without altering the 
real position of objects within the range of vision. We 
can thus observe the effect of this muscular adjustment 
without reference to any effect that might be produced 
by an alteration of the distance of objects. If there is 
an object before the eyes, and they are directed to a 
point in front of it or behind it, in the former case it ap- 
pears to approach, in the latter to recede; and the 
suggestion of the appropriate distance is so irresistible, 
that one yields to it, even when it is known to be an 
illusion 

II. The other guide to the perception of relative dis- 
tances is a fact of visual sensation — the dissimilarity of 
the retinal images of an object. It must be evident, 
from the foregoing diagram, that this dissimilarity, like 
the angle formed by the optic axes, varies inversely as 
the distance of the object seen ; in other words, the 
difference between the pictures formed on the two retinae 
increases as the object approaches the eyes. Another 
invariable association is thus formed, resulting in an irre- 
sistible and instantaneous suggestion. 

Here, again, the process, by which the perception is 
formed, admits of complete verification both by positive 
and by negative evidence. 

i. The appearance of depth in space — of solidity — 
may be artificially produced by imitating this natural 
sign. The stereoscopist takes two pictures of an object 
from the two different points of view from which it would 
naturally be seen by the eyes ; and when these are ad- 
justed so that each eye sees only the picture intended 
for it, the object stands out with all the appearance of 
solid extension which it possesses in reality. 



Perception. 173 

3. But this explanation is more powerfully confirmed 
by the negative fact, that the appearance of solid exten- 
sion is not produced when a near object is seen with 
both eyes, if the images on both are identical. Thus 
two solid bodies, placed near at hand in such a position 
as to produce the same picture on both retinae, appear 
plane. But a more familiar illustration is found in the 
fact, that no painting, however skilful its imitation of 
nature may be, ever produces the stereoscopic appear- 
ance, when seen near at hand with both eyes. The 
reason is, that, if the object or scene represented were 
really before us, it would produce a different image on 
each eye, whereas the picture produces two images that 
are identical.* 

An objection may perhaps, in some minds, be urged 
against this analysis on the ground that we do not see the 
two alleged pictures, but merely one object. In reply to 
this it is necessary only to point out, that we do see, and 
can at pleasure attend to the two retinal pictures. This 
may be made evident in various ways. We may, for 
example, by closing either eye, see the retinal pictures 
separately, when we shall find that the one eye sees more 
of the right, the other more of the left of an object. Or, 
again, we may direct the two eyes to different points of 
an object, and by this the spell of uniform association is 
broken. This may be done by holding an object before 
you, and directing your eyes to some point beyond it ; or 

* This was discovered, nearly four centuries ago, by the genius 
of Leonardo da Vinci. See his Treatise on Pai?iting (translated by 
Rigaud), p. 57. But the significance of the discovery remained 
unrecognised, till it was taken up and developed by Sir Charles 
Wheatstone in a celebrated paper on Binocular Vision, in the 
Philosophical Transactions for 1838, reprinted in his Scientific 
Papers (1879), p. 225. 



1 74 Psychology. 

if you cannot readily control the movement of the eyes 
by voluntary effort, you may by the application of a 
finger, push one eyeball out of the direction, to which it 
would naturally adjust itself. In either case the two 
retinal pictures will be at once apparent.* 

But when the natural adjustment of the eyes is not 
interfered with, the presence of two dissimilar pictmes 
on the retinae is invariably associated with the idea of a 
single solid body at a certain distance. It is infinitely 
more important that the mind should dwell upon the 
fact associated with the two pictures than upon the pic- 
tures themselves; and there is, therefore, nothing to check 
the suggestion of that fact. The two pictures, accord- 
ingly, seem to coalesce. In strict language, of course, 
they do not coalesce at all ; they simply suggest 
irresistibly and instantaneously the presence of a single 
ob^'ec 4 -, and they are not themselves noticed in the 
in:ta;uaneousness of the suggestion. 

(B) The binocular vision of near objects, however, is 
itself materially assisted by various data, upon which the 

* This might be illustrated further by some curious facts con- 
nected with squinting ; but these are somewhat complicated, owing 
to the various causes to which this maladjustment of the eyes is 
du^, as well as the peculiar habits of different patients. The 
student is therefore referred for details to Helmholtz's Physiologische 
Optik, pp., 699-701. Reid's Inquiry (Chapter vi., § 16) is not un- 
worthy of reading still. The phenomenon of double vision may be 
compared with the double touch referred to above (p. 147) ; and a 
still closer analogue is found in the somewhat unfamiliar 
phenomenon of double hearing, which, I am led to believe, is due 
to one ear being less quick in its sensibility than the other. By the 
way, is it this cause of double vision that is noticed in A Mid- 
>ummer Nighfs Dream, Act iv., Scene i. ? 

•• Methinks I see these things with parted eye, 
When everything seems double." 



Perception. i?$ 

mind is obliged to depend entirely when no advantage 

can be derived from the use of two eyes. In looking at 
remote objects the axes of the eyes are virtually parallel, 
and the images on the retinae virtually identical ; so that, 
in perceiving distance, we are limited to signs which do 
not depend on the inclination of the optic axes, — signs 
which are indispensable also in monocular vision. 

I. Probably the most important of these signs is the 
visible or retinal magnitude; that is, the size of the 
retinal image. This, as even the child knows, varies 
inversely as the distance ; and an uniform association is 
thus formed, with the usual result upon suggestion. This 
result may be artificially produced by varying the retinal 
magnitude without really altering the distance of an 
object. Such, in fact, is the artifice adopted for bringing 
remote objects within the range of distinct vision. By 
applying the laws of optics an instrument, — the tele- 
scope, — is constructed, which magnifies the retinal image 
of remote objects, and reduces in proportion their 
apparent distance. Thus a telescope, magnifying ten 
times, gives you a retinal image of the same size as if the 
object were ten times nearer ; and the mind, instead of 
dwelling on the magnified image, rushes rather to the 
fact of increased nearness, which is commonly associated 
with such increase of visible magnitude. 

The visible magnitude by itself, however, cannot tell 
the distance of an object. It is true, if an object is 
varying in apparent size, it may be known to be ap- 
proaching or receding, as when a distant sail grows larger 
or smaller while we gaze on it. But to know the specific 
distance of a body from its visible size, we must have an 
idea of its size from some other source — from some other 
sense — besides sight. This requirement, however, is no 
serious inconvenience, as we have formed independent 



i j6 Psychology. 

ideas of size with regard to all the familiar objects of 
daily experience. 

II. Another help to the visual perception of depth in 
space is the distribution of light and shade. On a plane 
surface light falls equally ; it is interrupted and falls un- 
equally on a solid or a number of solids making up a 
scene. The unequal distribution of light and shade, 
therefore, becomes suggestive of the solid extension, to 
which it is due. The following facts may be noticed in 
illustration. 

i. A skilful picture, seen with one eye, especially if 
isolated by a tube, produces the stereoscopic appearance, 
because the conditions of natural vision are, in one way, 
thus fulfilled. 

2. For binocular vision solidity is easily imitated, 
provided the imitation be kept at a sufficient distance 
from the eyes. On lofty cornices or ceilings the appear- 
ance of bas-relief may be produced, though it should 
never be attempted in the imitation of pillars, which 
descend to the floor, and can therefore be approached 
by spectators. On this principle, also, are founded the 
popular exhibitions known as dioramas, in which pictures 
of life-size are exhibited on a stage at a sufficient distance 
from the spectators to fulfil the requirements of natural 
vision. It is said that in these exhibitions the illusion 
of reality is at times so irresistible as to have completely 
overcome some of the spectators. 

3. An interesting experiment may be added. The 
visible difference between concavity and convexity con- 
sists in the fact, that in the former the shadow is on the 
side from which the light comes, in the latter on the 
opposite side. To determine, therefore, whether an 
object is concave or convex, we must know the side from 
which the light comes ; and if that be unknown, an 



Perception. 177 

object may appear either concave or convex, sometimes 
at will. For this reason also a concavity, seen through 
an inverting telescope, appears convex; a convexity, 
concave. A curious illusion of this sort is mentioned by 
Sir David Brewster. One day, as he was walking with a 
lady on the sea-shore at St. Andrews, the footmarks and 
other indentations in the sand appeared to both to be 
raised. He explained this appearance by the fact, that, 
though the sunlight was on the right, yet on the left there 
was a bright fringe of white surf, which seems to have 
momentarily simulated the light that caused the 
shadows.* 

III. A third sign of distance in space is the comparative 
sharpness or vagueness of outline, and brilliance or dull- 
ness of colour, with which objects are seen. These 
features in the visible appearance of objects depend on 
the interference of the atmosphere with the rays of light ; 
and they vary, therefore, with the state of the atmosphere. 
The result is that, in an unusually clear atmosphere, 
bodies are apt to appear nearer, in a dull atmosphere 
farther off, than they really are. Accordingly, people 
accustomed to a humid climate find that, in a dry 
climate, they are often deceived by an illusory appear- 
ance of nearness. The same principle explains why it is 
that, in pictures, objects in the background must be 
sketched with less definite outline, and their colouring 
toned down, else they would simply appear to be small 
without being remote. 

IV. The number of intervening objects also assists in 
the perception of distance, these being usually more 
numerous in proportion to the remoteness of the body 
seen. This explains the difficulty, especially for a lands- 

* On the Stereoscope, Chap. 16. 
M 



178 Psychology. 

man, of estimating distance at sea; and a similar difficulty 
is also experienced by an unpractised eye on the prairies 
of the West or the vast desert plains of the East. 

V. An additional assistance in this perception is derived 
from a somewhat obscure muscular sensation connected 
with the adjustment of the ocular focus. The distance 
of the focus behind a lens varies inversely as the distance 
of the object in front. In order to distinct vision it is 
necessary that the focus of the lens in the eye should fall 
exactly on the retina ; and consequently it must be 
variously adjusted in accordance with the varying dis- 
tances of objects. The process of adjustment long 
formed a subject of dispute among physiologists; but it 
is now generally ascribed to an increase in the convexity 
of the lens by the pressure of the ciliary muscle. This 
will explain why we feel a painful strain when an object 
is brought too close to the eye. 

VI. As a guide by which we are frequently, if not al- 
ways, directed in the perception of distance, may be 
mentioned the motion of objects across the field of 
vision. As the most of objects are stationary, their 
apparent motion is generally due to ourselves — to the 
movement of the whole body, or a turn of the head, or 
simply a sweep of the eye. In the apparent motion thus 
produced, the nearer objects are, the more rapidly do 
they flash across the field of vision, while they approach 
the appearance of being stationary in proportion to their 
remoteness. Such a very obtrusi\e phenomenon cannot 
be without its effect on our ordinary consciousness; and, 
especially in a complicated scene, like a forest, it will be 
found that the idea of relative distances, obtained from a 
fixed gaze, is extremely indefinite when compared with 
that which is acquired by a series of glances that sweep 
the scene. This is confirmed bv the experience of Dr. 



Perception. 179 

Franz's patient. " If," it is said in a passage already 
cited, " he wished to form an estimate of the distance of 
objects from his person, or of two objects from each 
other, without moving from his place, he examined the 
objects from different points of view by turning his head 
to the right and to the left." An additional illustration 
will be found immediately below in an illusion produced 
by the rapid flash of objects across the field of vision in 
railway-travelling. 

ii. Plane Extension. 

The chief perceptions, involving merely plane exten- 
sion, are those of magnitude and situation. 

(A) The visual perception of the magnitude of a body 
is based on its retinal magnitude combined with any of 
the signs of distance. The retinal magnitude, as we 
have seen, varies with distance ; and cannot, therefore, 
by itself signify real magnitude. It is for this reason that, 
in the illustration of objects whose size is unknown, 'the 
artist adopts the expedient of placing alongside for com- 
parison some familiar object, such as a human figure. 
Consequently in order to judge of the real magnitude of 
an object by sight, its distance must be taken into con- 
sideration along with its visible magnitude. From this 
it follows that any cause, which affects our judgment of 
distance, will affect equally our judgment of size. If an 
object appears nearer than it really is, inasmuch as its 
real distance makes its retinal image comparatively 
small, it cannot but appear to be also^'of comparatively 
diminutive size; while, on the other hand, as a near 
object forms a comparatively large image on the retina, 
it must to appearance enlarge in its dimensions, if there 
is anything to make it seem farther off than it is in 
reality. 



1 80 Psychology. 

Among the more familiar facts illustrative of this may 
be mentioned the well-known illusions of magnitude pro- 
duced by the comparative clearness or obscurity of the 
atmosphere. Objects seen through a fog, or even at 
night, whether by starlight or moonlight, always loom in 
vaster proportions, because, while they seem at an obscure 
distance, they yet produce a retinal image of undiminished 
magnitude. This phenomenon is so familiar that it is 
frequently alluded to in literature. Thus Tennyson 
speaks of 

11 Towers, that, larger than themselves 

In their own darkness, thronged into the moon." 

But more beautifully Sir Bedivere is pictured in Morte d 1 
Arthur: — 

" But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, 
Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked, 
Larger than human on the frozen hills." 

Again, the presence or absence of intervening objects, 
as it influences our perception of distance, modifies also 
our judgment of magnitude. Thus to a landsman's eye 
at sea distant bodies seem unusually small, because, 
owing to the absence of intervening objects, they seem 
nearer than they really are. Probably it is for this reason 
also that objects at the foot of a perpendicular height, 
when seen from the top, appear of diminished size.* On 
the other hand, it has long been observed that the moon 
on the horizon looks as if it were of larger diameter than 
when it has risen high into the heavens. The difference, 
indeed, seems to depend, in some measure, on the state 



* A fine illustration of this effect is the imaginary description of 
the view from the cliffs of Dover in King Lear, Act iv.. Scene 6. 



Perception. 1 8 1 

of the atmosphere ; * but it disappears to a large extent, 
if the horizontal moon is viewed through a tube which 
cuts off intervening objects. 

Another illusion may be mentioned here, as experi- 
enced by some persons in railway travelling.! While a 
train is moving at the ordinary rate of railway speed, 
objects in the vicinity scud across the traveller's field of 
vision with a rapidity altogether unusual, and are apt on 
that account to appear nearer than they are in reality. 
But this produces necessarily also an apparent diminu- 
tion in size. 

To complete the explanation of the perception of 
magnitude, it ought to be added that, in the case of 
vaster objects, the perception is aided by the muscular 
sweep of the eyes or of the head, or even by pacing the 
ground. The latter alternative, however, introduces us 
to the artificial methods of measuring space, which are 
distinct from the estimates of natural vision. 

(B) In speaking of the relative situations of different 
objects on the field of vision, we implicitly include the 
relative situations of different parts of the same object ; 
and these relative situations constitute its visible figure. 
Situation, in this comprehensive sense, is perceived by 
data that are partly visual, and partly muscular. 

I. The primary datum is visual ; it is the fact that the 
portion of the retina affected by the light which a body 
radiates has an uniform correspondence with the position 
of the body in space. By invariable experience we learn 
that the position of a body is precisely opposite to the 
portion of the retina on which its light falls ; in other 
words, by its essential structure the eye forms an inverted 



* Helmholtz, Physiologische Oftik, pp. 630 — I, 
t Ibid., p. 635. 



1 32 Psychology. 

image of every object, of the whole visible world. It 
seems to have been a puzzling problem to many minds, 
that, with an inverted image of objects on the retina, we 
should still see them erect. But the puzzle dissolves at 
cnce if we bear in mind that the retinal image is not 
perceived by us, but is merely a sign suggestive of certain 
spatial relations. The suggestion, however, is governed, 
as in all other cases, by the laws of association. Now, 
in every-day experience we associate an impression on 
the right side of the retina, not with an object to the 
right, but with an object to the left ; and a similar asso- 
ciation is formed in the case of all other positions. 
Consequently all the associations of ordinary life suggest 
positions for objects the very reverse of those parts of the 
retina, on which visual sensations are felt. 

Instead, therefore, of its being unintelligible that we 
should see objects erect by means of an inverted retinal 
image, it would be wholly unnatural, — it would imply a 
reversal of all the usual associations of life, — to see ob- 
jects in any other positions than those in which they 
appear. Occasionally, indeed, new associations are 
formed, and it is surprising how rapidly perception 
adapts itself to them. The microscopist soon learns to 
move his object " instinctively " in the right direction ; 
and in civilized life all persons acquire, at an early age, 
the faculty of dressing before a mirror, guided by an 
image in which right and left change their natural posi- 
tions. But that such dexterities are acquired by a more 
or less gradual process, may be perhaps rendered more 
evident to those who have forgotten the process of ac- 
quisition, by recalling the awkwardness of any unusual 
association, such as the first attempt to use a razor or a 
pair of scissors under the guidance of an image in a 
mirror 



Perception. 183 

II. It has been already observed that the perception 
of distance is very materially assisted by the motion of 
the eyes. An equal value must be attached to their 
motion in the perception of situation. This can be tested 
in ordinary experience by comparing the vague result of 
a fixed gaze on a scene, where the relative positions of 
objects are not otherwise known, with the distinct idea 
obtained from a series of shifting glances. It thus 
appears that this perception is aided by the association 
established in daily experience between the external 
position of an object and the muscular feeling of ad- 
justing the eyes to look at it. This statement finds an 
interesting confirmation in the results that are sometimes 
observed to follow from paralysis of the ocular muscles. 
Cases are mentioned, in which the rectus externus, — the 
muscle that pulls the eye horizontally outwards, — has 
been paralysed by a sudden injury. The patient, how- 
ever, will continue making ineffectual efforts to move the 
eye in the direction in which it was wont to be drawn by 
the paralysed muscle. There is, therefore, excited in 
consciousness a feeling of effort, though it is followed by 
no overt movement ; that is to say, the patient feels as 
if he were looking in a different direction, while the scene 
represented on the retina remains unchanged. By an 
irresistible suggestion, therefore, the whole scene appears 
to shift in the direction which has been uniformly 
associated in his mind with the felt effort of adjusting the 
eye.* 

It remains to be added that the direction in which we 
are looking depends on the adjustment, not only of the 
eyes, but also of the head, and that therefore the mus- 



* Wundt, Grundzuge iLr Physiologischen Psychologies Vol. ii., 
p. 91 (2nd ed.) 



1 84 Psychology. 

cular feeling connected with this adjustment forms a 
factor in the perception of situation. 

Concluding Observations. There are a few points 
connected with visual perception, which could not so 
conveniently be introduced into the above exposition, 
and may therefore be now noticed at the close. 

I. The perceptions, whose acquisition has just been 
explained, seem to be congenital in some of the lower 
animals ; and this fact has sometimes appeared to 
militate against the theory that they are not possessed at 
birth, but must be gradually formed, by man. Attempts 
have been made to question the correctness of the usual 
interpretation put upon the actions of those young 
animals that seem to direct their movements by sight 
almost from the very moment of birth. With regard to 
some of these animals, certainly, observations have yet to 
be made with sufficient care to show that their first 
movements might not be directed with equal accuracy by 
extraordinary acuteness of smell and muscular feeling. 
But the experiments of Mr. Douglas A. Spalding have 
apparently placed it beyond doubt, that the chick of the 
domestic hen, as well as the young of some other birds, 
are able to perceive by sight all dimensions of space as 
soon as they are fairly out of the shell.* The explanation 
of this congenital perception belongs to Animal Psycho- 
logy. It foims, in fact, a part of the general problem of 
instinct. But, even if the perception is admitted to be 
instinctive in some of the lower animals, the admission 
would simply accord with the obvious fact, that several 
powers, which are instincts in other animals, must be 
slowly acquired by man. 

♦The^e experiments are related by Mr. Spalding with interesting 
detail in an article on Instinct in Macmillans Magazine foi 
February, 1873. 



Perception. 185 

II. It is impossible to over-estimate the extent or the 
value of those ideas which we receive through the sense 
of sight, and difficult, therefore, to describe the mental 
condition of a man born blind. To interrogate such a 
person philosophically would throw light on many an 
obscure problem, and has therefore been justly described 
by Diderot, as " an occupation worthy of the united 
talents of Newton and Descartes, of Locke and 
Leibnitz."* The chief difficulty of such an investigation 
is the fact that the blind must use the language of other 
men. Now, as a very large proportion of our ideas are 
derived from the sense of sight, a very large proportion 
also of the words that we employ can find their full 
interpretation only in visual ideas. Accordingly we are 
apt to be misled by the blind man's employment of our 
language, and to take for granted that he attaches to that 
language the same meaning as ourselves. But notwith- 
standing this difficulty, the following facts are obvious. 

1. The fundamental deficiency of the congenially 
blind consists, of course, in their inability to feel, and 
therefore to imagine, light or colour. At times, indeed, 
they hit upon happy expressions to describe differences 
of colour in certain aspects. Such is the well-known 
description of red as being " like the sound of a trumpet," 
ascribed to a blind man by Locke. So also the blind 
Dr. Moyes remarked that red gave him a disagreeable 
sensation like the touch of a saw, and that the other 
colours decreased in harshness towards green, which give 
him an idea like that of passing the hand over a polished 
surface.! It is obviously natural that the blind should 



*D. Stewart's IV01 ks, Vol. iv., p. 304, (Hamilton's ed.). 
t See above, pp. 15 1-2. An interesting analogue to these compari- 
sons is fouml in the experience of a deaf man, to whom the sound 



1 86 Psychology. 

form their conception of colours, either from sounds of 
from touches or from both, as these are the most 
important sensations left to them. But all such com- 
parisons bring out, only the more clearly, the insuperable 
defect in the physical sensibility of the blind. They 
point to the analogy between colours and other sensations 
in certain general characteristics of all feeling ; they do 
not express the special characteristic of colour : they 
describe wherein the sensations of colour resemble, not 
wherein they differ from, other sensations. 

2. As a result of this defective sensibility there is a 
corresponding defect in the power of perception. Body, 
as body, — as extended, — the blind perceive only through 
the tactile and muscular senses ; and though they can 
recognise the existence of objects at a distance from the 
organism by an instrument in the hand, by sound, or 
even by smell, yet they are unable to comprehend an 
agent which can bring within the ken of sense bodies 
that are millions of miles away, so that their mechanical 
and other properties may be made the object of scientific 
investigation. This inability is strikingly indicated by 
several attempts, made by blind men, to describe visual 
perception. Thus M. du Puiseaux, the blind son of a 
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris, is said 
to have remarked : — "The eye is an organ on which the 
air* should have the same effect as my stick on my 

of a trumpet seemed like yellow, of a drum like red, of an organ 
like green, etc. (Maudsley's Physiology of the Mind, p. 93, note). 

* He has no conception of light y merely of a substance which can 
be felt by contact. It may be interesting to compare the case of 
Massieu, who was stone-deaf from birth, and who, in trying to 
conceive sound, imagined that persons hearing "saw with their 
ears" when they could not see with their eyes, as, for example, by 
night. Kitto's The Lost Senses, p. 158, (Am. ed.). 



Perception. 187 

hand," — that is, a kind of touch. When asked if he 
would not like to be restored to sight, it is not, therefore, 
surprising that he should have replied : — " If it were not 
for curiosity, I would rather have long arms : it seems 
to me that my hands would teach me better what is 
passing in the moon than your eyes or telescopes ; and, 
besides, the eyes cease to see sooner than the hands to 
touch. It would, therefore, be as well to improve the 
organ I have as to give me the one I want."* 

We have seen that an extension of touch is obtained 
by the use of instruments ; and this distant contact 
seems to have afforded to the blind poet, Dr. Blacklock, 
an approximate conception of vision, though still only a 
conception of touch. He states that, when awake, he 
could distinguish men only in three ways, viz., by their 
voices, by feeling their heads and shoulders, by listening 
to the sound and manner of their breathing. But he 
adds that in dreams, he had a distinct impression of 
objects in a different way, — in the way of a distant con- 
tact effected by threads between himself and them.f 

As illustrating further the mental condition of the 
congenially blind man, it may be added that, even after 
recovering sight, he takes some time to acquire the 
power of imagining visual perceptions, that is, a visible 
space that is not actually present. Thus it is related of 
Cheselden's patient, that at first he was " never able to 
imagine any lines beyond the bounds he saw ; the room 
he was in he said he knew to be but part of the house, 
yet he could not conceive that the whole house could 



* Quarterly Review for October, 1865. 

t Abercrombie's Intellectual Foivcrs, p. 220, 



1 88 Psychology. 

§ 6. — Muscular Perceptions. 

There is only one of the general senses that is of very 
great value in furnishing materials of cognition, and that 
is the muscular sense. Accordingly, in quitting the per- 
ceptions of the special senses we shall confine our atten- 
tion to muscular perceptions. 

The muscular sensations, from which most perceptions 
are derived, are those of a dead strain, or of slow move- 
ment. The sensations of rapid movement are generally 
too exciting to admit of being calmly examined, and used 
as materials of knowledge; while, even in the case of a 
dead strain, the strain must be moderate, as an excessive 
strain is apt to deaden the sensibility. 

I. The first and fundamental perception of this sense 
is that of the degree of muscular effort put forth. The 
sensations of muscular effort may, of course, be 
associated and compared like others ; and the readiness 
of suggestion, as well as the acuteness of discrimination, 
thus originated, are marvellous. It is upon such percep- 
tions that general dexterity, as well as gracefulness, of 
movement depends. Some of the muscular perceptions 
have been already noticed in connection with the per- 
ceptions of touch, where it was shown that the latter 
would be comparatively insignificant without the aid of 
the former. Here, therefore, it may be sufficient to 
notice an example or two of special muscular acuteness. 
It was shown, in the preceding section, how the ocular 
muscles are called into play in judging the relative dis- 
tances of visible objects ; and it must be obvious that 
the muscular adjustments, required for the minute differ- 
ences of distance which we can easily appreciate, can 
differ only in a very slight degree. This case illustrates 
the suggestiveness of muscular sensations ; the next 



Perception. 189 

furnishes an example of their suggestibility. The tones 
of the voice are produced by means of the laryngeal 
muscles, aided, in speaking and singing at least, by the 
complicated muscular apparatus about the mouth. When 
we reflect on the manifold modulations of the voice, 
even in ordinary talk, when we consider that a good 
singer can easily produce notes that differ only by a frac- 
tion of a tone, we can scarcely avoid wonder at the 
refinement of muscular perception which renders possible 
this delicacy of adjustment. 

II. The counterpart of this perception is that of the 

resistance which the muscular effort overcomes. This 

perception implies the association of muscular sensations 

with other sensations, visual and tactual. The muscular 

effort, which we are conscious of putting forth, becomes 

♦.hus connected with the world of sights and touches, and 

lat world accordingly shapes itself in our consciousness 

jito a world of objects that are not only visible and 

fingible, but offer resistance to our efforts. It is only 

ly this process that we form the complete notion of body 

it matter. Other sensations, indeed, discover that which 

S independent of my will : for I cannot choose but feel 

hem when exposed to the conditions of their pro- 

iuction. But this consciousness of a thing which is 

different from me, and does not depend for its existence 

on my volition, becomes obviously most distinct with the 

consciousness of a resistance presented to my voluntary 

exertion. Of course, we do not require to obtain first 

the incomplete notion of the material world, furnished 

by other senses, before we learn by muscular play that 

it is a world of resisting bodies \ for the muscular activity 

is incessant from the moment of birth. It is from the 

-ensibility excited by this incessant activity of muscle, 

hat we obtain the materials to build up our conception 



190 Psychology. 

of the world as a vast system of bodies endowed with 
force to resist ourselves. 

It is in its mechanical aspects that matter is thus 
made known, these aspects being so many forms of force 
resisting our muscular efforts. It is the function of physi- 
cal science to investigate these forms of force, with the 
view of arranging them into a systematic classification, 
and ascertaining precisely the laws in accordance with 
which they act 



Generalisation. 191 



CHAPTER IL 



GENERALISATION. 

THIS form of cognition contrasts with perception 
as the knowledge of classes with that of indi- 
viduals. It has been usually analysed into three stages : 
Abstraction, Generalisation proper, or Classification, and 
Denomination. There is a convenience in adapting our 
exposition to this analysis. 

§ 1. — Abstraction. 

The nature of abstraction may be explained by dwel- 
ling upon two facts : — (1) that it is the counterpart of 
attention ; (2) that it is merely an exercise of thought or 
comparison. 

I. Abstraction is the counterpart of attention. Atten- 
tion is the concentration of consciousness upon one 
among the multiplicity of phenomena. Now, as human 
consciousness is limited in its power, it cannot be con- 
centrated upon one phenomenon, without being to that 
extent withdrawn from others. This wilhdraival consti- 
tutes the mental act of abstraction* The act of abstrac- 



• If it be worth while to adhere to technical language in this 
matter, it may be observed that, according to that language, the 
phenomenon attended to is spoken of as being prescinded, while the 



192 Psychology. 

tion is therefore one form of the general limitation of 
human energy. The force which is organised in the 
individual is essentially limited ; and, when it is largely 
absorbed in one form of activity, cannot be at disposal 
for others. Thus it is well known that the excessive 
expenditure of human energy in intellectual toil, and still 
more in emotional excitement, is apt to interrupt vital 
actions, like digestion, at the time, and, if prolonged, to 
issue in chronic dyspepsia. Now, an act of attention on 
the part of any individual implies a discharge of his 
energy mainly in the direction in which consciousness is 
concentrated ; and it is therefore often accompanied by 
that " inhibitory action," as it is termed,* by which the 
functions of various bodily organs are apt to be inter- 
rupted. A man frequently finds himself thus arrested 
in the midst of any act in which he is engaged; he may 
be brought to a stand-still, while walking in a crowded 
thoroughfare, and remain absorbed in his own thoughts, 
oblivious of the stream of passengers jostling against him 
in his awkward position. Even a large assembly of men, 
when their attention is rapt by an entrancing outburst of 
oratory, are at times checked in such an essential act of 
vitality as breathing, as may be evinced by the long sigh 
that is drawn at any pause. It will be seen therefore, 
that the state which is popularly described as absent- 
mindedness, is essentially identical with abstraction. A 
person in this state is absent mentally, that is, has his 

mind is said to be abstracted from others. The notion of a 
prescinded phenomenon is what we mean by an abstract notion, 
while the notion of the same phenomenon in its actual connections 
with other phenomena is concrete. See Hamilton's Lectures on 
Metaphysics, Vol. ii., p. 292, with notes. 

* Ferrier's Functions of the Brain y pp. 70-1 (2nd ed.) Compare 
also pp. 460-8. 



Generalisation. 193 

mind abstracted from the concrete actualities around his 
body; but this arises from the fact that he is present 
mentally, — that his attention is engrossed, — with some- 
thing else. Consequently, the stories of absentminded- 
ness, which are met with in anecdo:ical biographies, may 
be taken as illustrative of the mental phenomenon under 
consideration. 

II. But it is still more important to observe, that in its 
essential nature abstraction is an act of thought, that is, 
of comparison. It is, in fact, simply that discrimina- 
tion, — that separation in thought, — which begins and 
continues with every step in the progress of knowledge. 
Abstraction and attention are, therefore, not only identi- 
cal with each other ; they are identical with the process 
of cognition itself. The fact signalised in these expres- 
sions is simply the intensification of a certain element 
which is implied more or less in all knowledge, but 
obtrudes itself more prominently in the careful procedures 
of the knowledge that is distinctively called science! The 
presence of this element will be realised, when it is 
borne in mind that, although for the necessities of scien- 
tific abstraction we discriminate cognition and feeling 
and will, yet such abstraction does not represent the 
concrete facts of mental life. Now, attention implies 
that the consciousness is strained in a particular direc- 
tion by some involuntary impulse or by a voluntary 
effort. The involuntary impulse may be either sensational 
or emotional. The attention may be absorbed in a sen- 
sation of excessive pleasure or excessive pain ; it may be 
rivetted on an object of some irresistible emotion, such 
as a passionate fondness or a paralysing fear. But the 
crowning triumphs of intellectual concentration are to be 
found in those efforts of voluntary attention or abstrac- 
tion, by which the cultivated mind girds itself for the un- 

N 



194 Psychology. 

impeded pursuit of truth. The necessity of such concen- 
tration in all forms of culture points to the dependence 
of intellectual greatness on a certain kind of moral great- 
ness, — on the power of will " to scorn delights, and live 
laborious days," in order to the attainment of a philos- 
ophic or artistic ideal. For practical wisdom, therefore, 
as well as for insight into the theory of abstraction, the 
student may read with profit the interesting citations, 
which Sir W. Hamilton has collected, from the testimony 
of great men, who have ascribed any intellectual eminence 
they have attained to their superior power of attention.* 
Abstraction then may be said to be an artificial act of 
thought, in so far as it separates what are conjoined in 
nature. We never find, and cannot even imagine, one 
object or one aspect of an object, existing apart from all 
others. On the contrary, every object holds some relation 
to other objects, and the various parts or the various 
qualities of an object appear in our consciousness as if 
they had grown together, that is, had become concrete. 
But while abstraction breaks up this natural concretion 
of the parts and qualities of things, it is not to be sup- 
posed that the act is unnatural. It is rather a necessary 
movement of intelligence ; for to have intelligence of any 
object is to think it as marked by this or that quality, as 
made up of this and that part. We can therefore compre- 
hend the complex phenomena of nature only by breaking 
them up into parts and qualities. Thus, when a plant or 
an animal is submitted for examination, if we would make 
our knowledge of it exact and complete, we must study 
apart the different organs of which it is formed, or the 
qualities, such as colour and figure, which constitute its 
different aspects. The relations also, in which one object 

* Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. i., pp. 255-261. 



Generalisation. 195 

stands to another, may be separately considered ; we may 
investigate their relations in space or their relations in 
time, their resemblances or their points of contrast, or 
their adaptability to various ends. Thus any of the mul- 
titudinous facts in the confusing complication of the 
phenomena presented in consciousness may be made an 
object of abstract attention, and the entire complication 
may be completely evolved into distinct cognition. The 
very organisation of a human being adapts him for this 
decomposition of a complex phenomenon, inasmuch as 
many of its factors, — its sensible qualities at least, — are 
made known to him through separate organs. 

To guard against misapprehension, it only remains to 
add that an abstract notion, as such, is not yet necessarily 
general. I may attend exclusively to some aspect of an 
individual ; and so far I form an abstract notion that is 
singular. This observation may be useful owing to the 
fact, that the terms, general and abstract, are often used 
convertibly in popular language, and even by some 
psychological writers who have been influenced by the 
usage of Locke. The reason of this confusion will im- 
mediately appear. 

§ 2. — Generalisation Proper. 

The fact is, that in the natural evolution of conscious- 
ness the abstract notion never rests at the stage of 
singularity. This must be evident from the nature of 
the process of perception, which was described at the 
beginning of the previous chapter. It was there shown 
that even in perceiving the individual we assign it to its 
class, that is, we identify one or more of its qualities 
with one or more of the qualities of other individuals. 
There is net, therefore, the radical distinction, which the 



196 Psychology. 

old psychologists supposed, between the perception of an 
individual and the conception of a class. As we proceed, 
they will appear rather intellectual acts of the same com- 
plex nature, with the general element subordinated in 
one case, and brought into prominence in the other. In 
fact, it may sometimes happen to be doubtful, whether 
our consciousness should be described as individual or 
as general in its reference. Suppose, for example, the 
word apple is spoken. That word will bring up an image, 
more or less vague, of the object it is used to denote. 
But this image may be thought as representative of all 
similar objects, or merely as representative of some par- 
ticular apple that I saw or ate to-day. In the former 
case, my consciousness is to be regarded as the concept 
of a class ; in the latter, as the imagination only of an 
individual. 

It appears, therefore, that in all cognition there is a 
general factor, which receives prominence in the cognition 
of a class, but retires into a subordinate place in the 
cognition of an individual. This factor is that which, 
when disconnected from the rest, is spoken of as an 
abstract notion. An abstract notion, as we have seen 
in the previous section of this chapter, is a consciousness 
of some quality or aspect of an object considered without 
reference to others. When a quality, of which an 
abstract notion might be formed, is cognised in actual 
connection with a certain set of other phenomena, the 
cognition is a perception ; the notion of the quality loses 
its abstractness, it becomes concreted with the other 
phenomena. The notion of a quality loses its abstract- 
ness also when it becomes general ; but in this case it 
is conceived as in possible connection with numerous 
sets of phenomena. Thus the cognition expressed in 
" I perceive this quadruped " implies the connection oi 



Generalisation. 197 

fourfootedness with an individual set of phenomena ; 
while the cognition, "I conceive a quadruped," implies 
the connection of the same quality, not with any definite 
set of actual phenomena, but with an indefinite number 
of possible phenomena. In other words, the notion of 
a quality, which in itself is an abstract notion, becomes 
general when it is thought as applying to various in- 
dividuals, as it is singular when it applies only to one. 

The evolution of general notions has formed the sub- 
ject of a controversy known in former times as the ques- 
tion of the Primum Cognitum.* The controversy deals 
with the problem, whether our knowledge, and therefore 
our language, begins with classes or with individuals. 
Two antagonistic theories most readily suggest them- 
selves to the mind, — one holding that knowledge starts 
from individual objects, and ascends from these to 
classes, another that the evolution of intelligence is in 
the reverse way. The young student of psychology is 
apt to be perplexed at first by the array of facts which 
each of these rival theories is capable of summoning to 
its support. We are now in a position to see **>at either 
theory expresses a part, but only a part, of tne truth, 
and that there is a point of larger view which embraces 
the partial truth of both. 

1. Our analysis of perception, in its various complica- 
tions, has dispelled the popular mistake, which still in- 
fects much of our scientific literature, that the individual 
is a ready-made object, presented to the mind by an 



* Of this controversy, an interesting historical and critical sketch 
is given by Sir William Hamilton in his Lectures on Metaphysics, 
vol. ii., pp. 319-332. Some interesting remarks on the question, 
from a philological point of view, will be found in Max Midler's 
Lectures on the Science of Language (First Series), pp. 373-3S6. 



1 98 Psychology. 

indecomposable flash of intuition. The cognition, by 
which the individual is revealed to consciousness, might 
rather be compared to a many-coloured light, whose 
variously-tinted rays are brought by the mind itself to 
the focus of distinct vision. In other words, an 
individual object of perception is the result of an in- 
tellectual process ; and the process is one that continues 
with every definition of individuality, with every exten- 
sion of our insight into the attributes, by which an object 
is differentiated from all others. It is evident, therefore, 
that our knowledge cannot begin with individuals. 

2. But it would be equally incorrect to suppose, that 
knowledge starts from classes. The child, indeed, learns 
at an early period certain broad differences between 
things ; but these differences remain for a long time very 
broad, and it is only after a considerable evolution of 
intelligence, that they are narrowed down to definite 
characteristics, and conceived as belonging in common 
to a number of individuals which are thus constituted 
into a distinct class. 

It cannot, therefore, be said that knowledge begins 
with what is definitely general any more than with what 
is definitely individual. Since neither of these alterna- 
tives is admissible, there is but one conclusion to which 
we are shut up : knowledge must begin with something 
that is indefinite. Now, we have seen, in Book I., that 
the raw materials of knowledge, as of all mental life, are 
sensations. It is true, these cannot, as such, be called 
cognitions ; but cognition begins with the definition of 
sensations in consciousness, that is, with the identifica- 
tion of those that resemble, and the discrimination of 
those that differ. Whenever I become conscious, how- 
ever vaguely, that a sensation experienced now differs 
from other sensations, and yet resembles some sensations 



Generalisation. 1 99 

felt before, the sensation becomes to that extent defined, 
that is, definitely known. Every advance in knowledge, 
moreover, is a progress towards the more definite dis- 
crimination of a phenomenon frorii those that are different, 
and its more definite identification with those which it 
resembles. This, however, is merely another way of 
saying that the evolution of knowledge is in the direction 
at once of more definite individualisation and generali- 
sation. 

With regard to the Primum Cognition, while neither of 
the above-mentioned rival theories can be maintained in 
its exclusiveness, it is not to be overlooked that the per- 
ception of the individual is an easier process of intelli- 
gence than the conception of a class ; and therefore it 
was observed above, that naturally the perception of the 
individual comes first in the evolution of intelligence. 
For, although the individual is not a simple object 
apprehended by an indivisible act of cognition, yet its 
complexity is based mainly on the natural associations of 
space and time ; the individual is a concretion of nature. 
But in the conception of a class the mind requires to 
abstract from the concretions obtruded on it by nature, 
and to form a combination of its own among individuals 
that are related, not by spatial or temporal associations, 
but merely by resemblance. It is for this reason, that 
concrete thinking is commonly more natural than that 
which is abstract or general ; while concrete forms of 
expression are most readily intelligible, and are therefore 
always to be preferred in addressing children or un- 
tutored minds. 

Accordingly it is not incorrect to regard generalisation 
as a measure of the mastery of nature by human intelli- 
gence. It is true that even the perception of individuals 
is a certain mastery of intelligence over the confusing 



200 Psychology. 

variety of nature ; it is also true, as we have seen, that 
perception implies a certain generalisation, for the in- 
dividual perceived must be referred to its class ; and it is 
true still further, that every ascent in generalisation 
extends our insight into the nature of individuals by 
unfolding their relations to one another. Still, it is by 
knowing the unities that pervade nature, rather than by 
acquaintance with a multitude of individuals, that nature 
becomes intelligible. Particulars, even when cognised as 
individual objects, are so multitudinous and so various, as 
to be hopelessly perplexing to the limited understanding 
of man until they are reduced to some kind of compre- 
hensible unity by classification. The grouping, therefore, 
of any number of individuals into a class by the recog- 
nition of some feature common to them all is man's 
intellectual conquest of their perplexing multiplicity. 
The whole class of objeets can then be treated as a single 
object of thought ; and, by the discovery of a resemblance 
between it and other classes, we may ascend to a higher 
genus which embraces them all. This process, which is 
the process of science, may be carried on till we reach 
some supreme generalisation, in which all the subordinate 
classes shall find their appropriate place. 

At low stages of culture, as might be expected, this 
process has advanced but a short way. It appears from 
the languages of many savage tribes, that they have not 
reached the higher classifications that are familiar among 
civilised men, though they often possess a luxuriant 
growth of expressions for the lower species. In some 
Australian languages, for example, there are no generic 
names for tree, fish, or bird, but only specific names for 
the different kinds of each. The languages of the 
uncivilised races are said to be also extremely deficient 
in abstract terms. Of a piece with this is the ex- 



Generalisation. 201 

tremely limited capacity of savages in regard to 
numbers, the limit in many cases being apparently 
the five fingers of one hand, or at most the ten fingers of 
the two.* 

But the truth of all this must be understood as by no 
means implying that the savage has reached definite 
individualisation before reaching definite generalisation. 
It is true, that a comparatively uncultured mind some- 
times attains a peculiar definiteness of individualisation. 
This is illustrated in the familiar fact, that a peasant will 
distinguish from one another his sheep and cattle, which 
seem to many a cultured mind destitute of any individual 
differences. But this arises from the circumstance of the 
rustic intellect being largely expended on the observation 
of such individual differences ; and it is important to 
bear in mind, that the marks, by which to such an intel- 
lect one object is distinguished from another, are often 
of that insignificant character which is due to an acci- 
dental association in time or place; they are not -those 
essential attributes of an object, upon which the scientific 
intellect would fix in forming its discriminations. At 
this stage, therefore, the mind is still in bondage to the 
combinations of nature ; it is only when the mind asserts 
its own free activity, that it learns to recognise individual 
differences which depend on general laws, and not on 
casual associations. The progress of knowledge, — the 
mastery of nature by human intelligence, — may therefore 
truly be said to be indicated by both individualisation 
and generalisation alike. 



* Facts illustrative of these statements will be found in Tylor's 
Primitive Culture, Chap. vii. ; Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, pp. 
437-9, and 562-3 ; H. Spencer's Principles of Sociology, Part i. f 
Chap, vii., § 43. 



202 Psychology. 

§ 3. — Denomination. 

The process of generalisation is incomplete till the 
class, which has been formed by thought, receives a 
name. Now, since nature becomes intelligible only in 
proportion as its manifold phenomena are grouped into 
classes, it is evident that intelligence implies the forma- 
tion of general terms. Consequently general terms are 
found in all languages, being in fact essential to the very 
possibility of human speech ; and their origin, like that 
of language, dates of course from prehistoric times. The 
function of such terms in human thought must therefore 
be explained in order to the complete exposition of the 
process of generalisation. 

But this function has formed the subject of an impor- 
tant controversy, which is not yet altogether settled. The 
history of this controversy might, indeed, be regarded in 
some measure as the history of philosophy itself; and 
consequently it would be out of place to attempt even a 
sketch of it here. It is especially unnecessary to enter 
upon any account of mediaeval Realism, which involves 
a problem in ontology rather than in psychology. We 
may, therefore, confine our attention to the more modern 
controversy between Conceptualism and Nominalism, 
which does possess a psychological interest. The two 
rival theories may be briefly described as holding, — the 
former that we can, the latter that we cannot, frame some 
idea corresponding in generality to any class of things 
that we name. To a careful reflection it must be evident 
that, even if the whole controversy cannot be set aside 
as a mere dispute about words, yet it is in a large measure 
stripped of any meaning when the terms involved are ac- 
curately employed. For 

1. On the one hand, it must evidently be conceded to 



Generalisation. 203 

the Conceptualist, that thought has a certain generality 
of reference, however that may be explained. We can 
think, judge, reason about classes of things, — about men, 
animals, vegetables, triangles, circles, and so forth, — with 
the clear consciousness that our thoughts, judgments, 
reasonings, hold good with regard to the whole of each 
class. On any other supposition science, and ordinary 
thinking itself, would be impossible ; and the language 
of Nominalists, when fairly considered, never amounts to 
a denial of this. 

2. On the other hand, it must with equal certainty be 
conceded to the Nominalist, that we cannot form a 
mental image of a class, that is, an image combining all 
the contradictory attributes by which the different 
individuals of the class are distinguished from each other. 
Whenever the doctrine of Conceptualism seems to 
maintain this, the very statement of it becomes its 
adequate refutation. Take, for example, the well-known 
passage of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Under- 
standing .•• — " Does it not require some pains and skill 
to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet none 
of the most abstract, comprehensive, or difficult) ; for it 
must be neither oblique, nor rectangle, neither equilateral, 
equicrural, nor scalenon ; but all and none of these at 
once. In effect, it is something imperfect that cannot 
exist ; an idea, wherein some parts of several different 
and inconsistent ideas are put together." This has not 
unfairly been regarded as a reductio ad absurdum. 

Consequently, when thought refers to a class, as when 
it refers to an individual, the mental image before our 
consciousness is that of an actual or possible individual, 



Book iv. , Chap. vii. , § 9. 



204 Psychology. 

or, if the process of thought is prolonged, there may be 
a series of changing images representing many distinct 
varieties in the class. If the mental image before our 
consciousness were taken to represent merely an in- 
dividual, then its individual peculiarities would form the 
chief object of attention j but these peculiarities are 
abstracted from as much as possible, when the image is 
made to represent a whole class. In accordance with the 
principles explained in the first section of this chapter, 
the attention is then concentrated on the general features 
of the individual imaged, — on those features which 
that individual possesses in common with other individuals 
of the class. Accordingly, we know that our reasonings 
hold good with regard to that individual simply because 
it possesses the features of the whole class, and therefore 
that they hold good also of all individuals possessing the 
same general features. The function of the mental image 
implied in all general reasonings is precisely analogous 
to that of the diagram commonly used in geometrical 
demonstrations. The diagram must be a single figure 
with something to distinguish it from all others. If of a 
triangle, for example, it must be large or small, equilateral, 
isosceles, or scalene, right-angled, obtuse-angled, or 
acute-angled, and it must be made of some particular 
sort of stuff. But in a demonstration we can think of it 
as a triangle without reference to any of its individual 
peculiarities ; and we can therefore feel assured that our 
demonstration applies equally to any other triangle as 
such. 

We are now in a position to explain more definitely 
the part which general terms play in the process of 
generalisation. That part is twofold. The general term 
assists us in keeping before the mind the class-properties 
of individuals to the exclusion of their distinctive pecu- 



Generalisation. 205 

liarities ; and it enables us also to retain a classification, 
once formed, as a permanent possession of the mind. 

1. The general name is usually given to a number of 
objects, because it is significant of some property which 
they all possess ; and, consequently, it is calculated to 
suggest that property alone to the mind. A general 
name, therefore, becomes a sort of symbol for all objects 
possessing the property which it signifies ; and our 
general reasonings accordingly approach, if they do not 
actually attain, the. nature of symbolical reasoning. The 
reasoning that is called symbolical is typified in the 
sciences of arithmetic and algebra. In arithmetic, by 
means of symbols, we carry on reasonings about abstract 
numbers, that is, about numbers without reference to the 
things that are numbered; while in algebra, by a similar 
instrumentality, we can reason about number in the 
abstract without reference to any particular numbers. 
Our general reasonings may never reach this absolutely 
symbolical character; but general terms enable us to 
dispense with the continued reference in consciousness 
to the actual individuals they signify, in the same way, if 
not in the same degree, as arithmetical figures and 
algebraical signs form an instrument for working out 
numerical calculations that are quite independent on the 
peculiar nature of the things that may be numbered. 

2. But there is another function for general terms. 
We have analysed the process by which the cognition c f 
a class is formed ; but after the class is thus cognised, 
how is it to be recognised ? The individual, as a natural 
combination, is perpetually presented in the course of 
nature, and requires, therefore, no other means of re- 
cognition, though the recognition even of the individual 
is facilitated by the expedient of proper names. But the 
class has no natural existence like that of the individual, 



206 Psychology. 

and therefore is not obtruded on consciousness again 
and again in the mere order of natural events. How, 
then, does it become a permanent acquisition for the 
mind? By means of general terms. The general term, 
we have seen, is significant of the common property be- 
longing to a number of individuals, and preserves for us, 
therefore, the fact that these individuals have been 
grouped into one class on the ground of their all pos- 
sessing that common property. The process of classifi- 
cation has often been compared to the action of the 
merchant who counts a confused heap of coins by group- 
ing them in piles of a definite number. The comparison 
might be extended by observing that, as the continuance 
of the piles implies the law of gravitation, without which 
they would all be scattered as soon as formed, so the 
permanent classification of phenomena implies the 
faculty of naming, else the phenomena would return to 
their uncomprehended multiplicity, as soon as they were 
arranged into classes. 

It has been questioned, whether any generalisation 
would be possible without the assistance of general 
names. The question is perhaps futile, as all normal 
human intelligence is developed by means of language, 
and we have no opportunity of knowing what might be 
possible to a being, could such be conceived, who was 
endowed with a normal human mind, and yet incapable 
of language,— of any system of signs. But the close de- 
pendence of generalisation on the faculty of speech is 
indicated by the fact, that deaf mutes find a difficulty in 
abstracting, and therefore in grasping the signification of 
common nouns.* 



* Dr. Howe, in the Eighth Annual Report of the Massachusetts 
Asylum, quoted in Mrs. Lamson's Life and Education of Laura 



Generalisation. 207 

This analysis shows that our general reasonings are 
exposed to a two-fold danger, — one arising from their 
symbolical nature, the other from the fact that the men- 
tal image which represents a class is necessarily the image 
of an individual. 

1. The fact, that general terms become to our thought 
symbols of a whole class of objects, implies that the 
meaning they suggest cannot be perpetually corrected by 
examining all the individuals of the class. Now, however 
closely such a term may be defined, it remains capable 
of suggesting more or other meanings than that to which 
it is limited by definition ; and though we may set out 
with the defined signification, this is apt to be lost sight 
of in the course of a long process of reasoning. This 
danger is to a considerable extent avoided by the coinage 
of a purely scientific nomenclature ; but in many depart- 
ments of thought, especially in the mental and moral and 
political sciences, we are still largely exposed to all the 
vague and vacillating suggestions of ordinary language. 
In the history of psychology an interesting chapter might 
be written on the influence which has been exerted by 
the figurative implications of such terms as impression, 
affection, representation, image, idea. 

2. In general reasonings the image of an individual 
stands before the consciousness as a sort of mental 
diagram to represent its class. We may begin a process 
of reasoning with the exclusion of all features of the indi- 
vidual image except those which are common to the 
class ; yet in course of the process we often find the 



Bridg7nan, p. 16. Laura Bridgman herself used general adjectives 
at first as proper names, that is, as names of the individual objects 
to which they were applied {I/>id., p. 40). Compare Tylor's Intro- 
duction to Anthropology^ p. 1 1 9. 



208 Psychology. 

imagination lording it over thought, and are pulled up 
by some opponent objecting another individual or other 
individuals, to which our reasonings do not apply. This 
is a vice which perpetually besets the scientific inquirer, 
who is not on his guard against the temptation to leap at 
conclusions after an inadequate induction of particular 
facts. It is in all minds the source of much of the power 
which custom wields over our thoughts, leading us to 
ascribe the characteristics of the objects with which we 
are familiar to all objects of the same class, however 
different their circumstances may be. This tendency is, 
therefore, the peculiar defect of what we might, in the 
largest sense, call the untravelled mind. 



Reasoning. 209 



CHAPTER III. 



REASONING. 

REASONING is often described as the procedure of 
consciousness from individuals to the class which 
they form (Induction), or from a class to an individual or 
individuals that it includes (Deduction). It is, therefore, 
rather a process, more or less lengthy, by which an object 
is comprehended, than an act of immediate intuition, by 
which an object is apprehended. It follows from, this, 
that reasoning cannot always be precisely distinguished 
either.from perception or from generalisation, just as these 
cannot be precisely distinguished from one another. 
Every perception, as implying a cognition of the class- 
attributes of the object perceived, involves a reasoning, 
commonly of the deductive sort ; while generalisation is 
obviously the result of some mode of inductive reasoning 
however vague. But in the mental phenomena, which 
we commonly speak of as perceptions and generalisations, 
the reasoning process becomes unconscious, being absorbed 
in its products. It may therefore be studied to more ad- 
vantage in those conscious efforts of intelligence to which 
the name of reasoning is, in a stricter sense, confined. 
But it must not be supposed that, in actual mental life, 
conscious and unconscious reasonings can be always 
distinguished with exactness. In the daily consciousness 

o 



210 Psychology. 

of every man there are numerous acts which it would be 
difficult to refer exclusively to either class. 

In analysing the process of reasoning, it is important 
to keep in view the distinction between the psychology 
of the reasoning process and the science of logic. 
Psychology, as the science of mental facts, details the 
steps which reasoning follows in actual life with all its 
comic and tragic inaccuracies. Logic, on the other 
hand, belongs to that class of sciences which, as dealing 
with laws that must be observed in order to the attain- 
ment of a certain end, have been appropriately styled by 
the general title of Homology. Every sphere of our 
mental life, in fact, may have a nomology of its own 
according to the end which it is designed to subserve. 
Thus we point an end to our sensitive life in such 
studies as those of gastronomy, perfumery, music, the 
theory of colours ; while the higher activities find their 
norm in mechanics, aesthetics, ethics, politics. In the 
same way, then, as the psychology of the moral life is 
distinguished from ethics, or the psychology of calculation 
from arithmetic, the psychology of reasoning ought to be 
kept apart from logic* 

Actual, as distinguished from logical, reasoning is 
manifold. It commences, perhaps, with the movement 
from particulars to particulars, if this be not mere 
unreflective association, and then developes into the 
reflective, or at least more reflective, movements from 
the particular to the general, from the general to the 



* Sometimes, it may be further observed, psychology, and logic 
also, are confounded with philosophy, as in the discussion by 
psychologists and logicians of the question regarding " the ultimate 
postulate," "the fundamental axiom,'" which, in the last analysis, 
forms the criterion or warrant of all thinking, of all science. 



Reasoning. 21 1 

particular. To determine the warrant for such in- 
ferences, is the function of logic ; but the theory of 
the fallacies, which always forms a prominent part of 
that science, shows how the actual movements of thought 
are often regardless of logical warrant. 

There are three factors of the reasoning process, which 
have been usually distinguished by psychologists and 
logicians. The first is the object reasoned about ; the 
second, the predication, to which the reasoning process 
leads, in reference to that object; the third, the process 
itself, by which the predication is established. We shall 
take these factors in separate sections. 

§ i. — Conception. 

The mental act, by which an object of thought is 
formed, was commonly named, in the old logical text- 
books, simple apprehension ; but by many logicians it is 
more appropriately called conception. The word concep- 
tion, like comprehension, signifies literally grasping together, 
and is therefore an appropriate name for any kind of 
knowledge which is obtained by gathering many into one. 
Such an act of knowledge may be accomplished either by 
mentally grouping into one class a number of different 
individuals on the ground of their possessing some 
common property or properties, or by associating a 
number of different properties on the ground of their 
belonging in common to the same individual or the same 
class. 

The object of consciousness in a conception, — that 
which is conceived, — is called, in the technical language 
of logic, a concept ; and the word or combination of 
words, expressing a concept, is called a term. 

From this it will be seen that a term, as expressing a 



2 1 2 Psychology. 

concept, may be viewed in various aspects. For a con- 
cept, as just explained, is either a combination of indi- 
viduals forming a class, or a combination of properties 
belonging to an individual or to a class. The former 
combination constitutes what is called the exte?ision of a 
concept or of the term expressing it; the latter combina- 
tion is called intension. Consequently a term may be, 
and in thought actually is at different times, interpreted 
in reference to both of these aspects. Thus the term 
man, to different minds, or even to the same mind at 
different times, may mean either the individuals who 
compose the human race, or the attributes that constitute 
human nature. It has also been made a subject of 
discussion, whether terms are the names of things, or 
merely of our ideas of things.* 

In all such discussions confusion is apt to arise from 
failure to distinguish the logical and the psychological as- 
pects of the question at issue. The logician, dealing with 
the laws which must be observed for the sake of accurate 
thinking, may select one aspect of terms as that which is 
most suitable for the end he has in view. But his selec- 
tion does not foreclose the cognate psychological ques- 
tion : it does not imply that the aspect selected is the 
only possible aspect in which terms may be interpreted, 
or even that it is the most common interpretation put 
upon terms in the confused and blundering thoughts that 
make up the daily mental life of men. On the contrary, 
whatever interpretation of terms may be considered most 
convenient for logical thinking, it remains a fact, which 
the psychologist cannot ignore, that the aspect in which 
a term is viewed, may vary with the attitude of the mind. 



Mill's Logic, Book i., Chap, n., § 2. 



Reasoning, 2 1 3 

Mr. Mill holds that terms properly denote things rather 
than merely our ideas of things:* and with certain 
explanations his theory is correct; for thought would fail 
in its function, if it did not take us beyond its own sub- 
jective operations, if it did not construe for us an objec- 
tive world of things. But the explanations, which ought 
to accompany this statement, take us into the sphere of 
ontology. Mill is led into the ontological question which 
his statement suggests ; and it is worth noting that his 
statement is nearly eviscerated of its meaning by his 
doctrine as to what constitutes a thing. f 

All our concepts, whether they represent perceptions 
of individuals, or generalisations, imply, as we have 
already seen, reasonings more or less unconscious. Our 
intellectual life begins with unreflective reasonings, and 
the concepts thus reached form the starting-point of 
more reflective reasonings, by which the obscure and 
uncertain and limited results of unreflective reasoning 
are developed and confirmed and extended. 

§ 2. — -Judgment. 

An object of thought — a concept — is usually, as we 
have seen, a combination of attributes. But, of course, 
all the attributes of an object are not within the know- 
ledge of every intelligence ; and even when they have 
become familiar to any intelligence, are not always 
present to his consciousness. He may have learnt, for 
example, all the properties by which a particular species 
of animals, vegetables, or minerals is characterised ; but 



* Mill's Logic, Book i., Chap, ii., § 2. 
\ Ibid., Book i., Chap. 111. , §§ 13-15. 



214 Psychology, 

in his ordinary thoughts these properties are seldom all 
consciously recalled. Take, by way of illustration, any 
plant with its peculiar corolla, calyx, and leaf, the num- 
ber of its petals, sepals, pistils, and stamens, as well as 
other facts in reference to its organisation, its growth, or 
its geographical distribution. Even the simpler consti- 
tution of a mineral does not exclude a multiplicity of 
properties, geometrical, physical, and chemical, not to 
speak of its adventitious aesthetic or commercial uses. 
Thus gold is distinguishable from other minerals by no 
less than eight different properties. Then, when we come 
to the more complicated concepts of biology and psycho- 
logy, of ethics and politics, — life, thought, beauty, con- 
science, right, and many others of a similar nature, — we 
find not only that our concepts usually exhibit a very 
incomplete grasp of all the factors implied, but a very 
indefinite apprehension even of those which are con- 
ceived. 

Our concepts are, therefore, ordinarily of a somewhat 
ndefinite character. Now, when an ordinary indefinite 
concept becomes defined by attributing to it some 
quality, our thought assumes the form that is technically 
called a judgment, the indefinite concept being the sub- 
ject, and the defining quality the predicate. When, for 
example, to the indefinite concept of gold as a yellow 
metal I add the predicate, that it is the most malleable 
of all metals, or that it is fusible in a mixture of nitric 
and hydrochloric acids, I form a judgment about the 
subject gold. It is scarcely necessary, therefore, to add 
that judgments cannot by a rigid line be separated from 
concepts : the judgment is in fact simply the concept 
unfolding itself to clearer definition. 

Of judgments some are formed by simply evolv- 
ing the meaning involved in the subject. Thus, when I 



Reasoning. 215 

say, A quadruped is a four-footed animal, the predicate of 
four-footedness merely unfolds the idea implied in the 
subject. Such judgments have accordingly been called 
analytic, explicative, verbal, essential. On the other hand, 
judgments, which add to the idea implied in the subject, 
are called synthetic, ampliative, real, accidental* 

Explicative judgments are dismissed by some writers 
as useless fictions.! But this extreme depreciation of 
such judgments overlooks their real nature. To most 
minds the ordinary subjects of thought are indefinite 
concepts which require explication ; and such explication 
is rendered all the more necessary from the fact that 
most of the terms in common use have wandered so far 
from their primitive meaning, that their etymology no 
longer reveals their full connotation. Still this very fact 
implies that the distinction between analytic and syn- 
thetic judgments is one that cannot always be carried 
out. For when the etymology of a term does not reveal 
its connotation, any factor of the connotation may con- 
stitute a synthetic judgment ; and, on the other hand, 
when a scientific thinker has mastered the complete con- 
notation of a subject, it might be said that for him every 

judgment about it must be merely analytic. It some- 

• 

* Some writers, like Thomson {Outline of the Lazes of Thought, 
§ 81), distinguish, as a separate class, tautologous judgments, in 
which a term is simply predicated of itself, as in Facts are facts, A 
maris a man. By writers of the school of Locke such judgments 
are described by the name identical, and are commonly dismissed 
as frivolous. See Locke's Essay, Part iv., Chap, viii., §§ 2-3. 
Thomson, indeed, recognises the fact that such judgments may 
become charged with meaning by some particular emphasis. But 
he is mistaken in regarding that as accidental to them ; it is rather 
their essential and ordinary use. 

+ Locke's Essay 07t the Human Understanding, Tart iv., Chap, 
viii., §§ 4-10 ; Mill's System of Logic, Book i., Chap. vi. 



216 Psychology. 

times happens, however, that a concept, in its general 
attributes perfectly definite, receives some particular 
qualification, as when a well-known mineral or vegetable 
is said to be applied to certain adventitious uses, or when 
an accidental action or state is ascribed to any person. 

From this it appears that subjects admit of various 
sorts of predicates. The classification of these is the 
object of the logical doctrine of predicables, the term 
predicablt being employed for any word that is capable of 
being used as a predicate. This doctrine is of special 
interest to the logician for the sake of that accuracy in 
thinking at which he aims ; for to attain that end it is 
indispensable to know precisely the relation of the pre- 
dicate to the subject of a judgment. But the classifi- 
cation of predicables is not of the same importance to 
the psychologist. Connected with this subject, however, 
there is a general question which does possess psycho- 
logical interest, — the question, namely, as to the import 
of a judgment or proposition. In the preceding section 
it was shown that a similar question is discussed in 
reference to the import of terms ; and it was there 
explained that a term may be interpreted from different 
points of view. The same points of view also affect the 
import attached to propositions. For example, we may 
consider mainly either the extension or the intension of 
a predicate, and this difference will alter the mode in 
which we interpret its relation to the subject. In fact, 
an alteration in the form of expression will often give 
prominence to the one of these views over the other. 
Thus, if I say, The omithorynchus is a quadruped, I 
naturally think of this animal as belonging to the class 
of quadrupeds, that is to say, I interpret the proposition 
as meaning that the subject is included within the exten- 
sion of the predicate. When I vary the expression into 



Reasoning. 217 

The ornithorynchus is four footed, I think rather of four- 
footedness as forming one of the attributes of the animal, 
that is, the predicate is conceived as being included in 
the intension of the subject. 

In consequence of the various aspects in which it thus 
appears that a proposition may be viewed, a good deal of 
controversy has been excited regarding the real import 
of propositions. Mr. Mill devotes considerable space to 
the criticism of various theories on this subject* He 
opposes the doctrines, that a proposition expresses a 
relation between two ideas, or between the meanings of 
two terms, or that it refers something to, or excludes 
something from, a class ; and, in accordance with his 
theory of the import of terms, he holds that a proposition 
is to be interpreted as meaning that the things denoted 
by the subject possess the attributes connoted by the 
predicate. 

Now, in all such discussions, as in the similar discus- 
sions with reference to the import of terms, consider- 
able confusion arises from allowing the inquiry of the 
logician to run into the field of psychology. The pro 
blem of logic is to find out what is the aspect in which a 
proposition should be treated with the view of securing 
the greatest accuracy of thought in its use. But the 
import attached to propositions for logical purposes is 
not necessarily supposed to be that of which alone they 
admit, or even to be the interpretation most commonly 
put upon them in the confused thinking of ordinary 
mental life. 

§ 3. — Reasoning Proper. 
When a judgment is analytic, it must be evident to 
every one who understands its terms, its evidence is con- 

* System of Logic, Book i., Chap. v. 



2 1 8 Psychology. 

tained in its own terms, in itself; it is, therefore, called 
self-evident. Whether any synthetic judgments also are 
self-evident, is a question that need not be discussed 
here. It is admitted that a vast proportion of our judg- 
ments do not contain their evidence in themselves : their 
evidence must, therefore, be sought outside. 

Now, a judgment is a relation of two concepts, — of 
two things conceived ; and when that relation is in itself 
unknown, it must be reached from some other relation 
that is known. The process, by which this is reached, 
is called reasoning or i/i/cn/ice, in the stricter sense of 
these terms. It is this process that is now to be analysed. 
In order to this analysis it is to be observed, that the 
process implies (i) an unknown relation, (2) a relation 
that is known, (3) a transition from the latter to the 
former relation. Now, such a transition of thought must 
consist in the conscious comparison of the two relations. 
The analysis may be rendered clearer by a few expository 
observations. 

I. Reasoning is thus seen to be, in its essential nature, 
merely the universal process of intelligence, — comparison, 
with association of course implied. Objects, — materials, — 
therefore, form fit data for reasoning, in proportion to 
their fitness for the uses of intelligence in general, — in 
proportion to their comparability, that is, the ease with 
which their relations are discoverable. Now, no rela- 
tions are so obvious, so distinctly apprehensible, so 
measurable, as those relations of mutual externality which 
constitute space ; and, therefore, geometry was the 
earliest science to attain exactness of reasoning. Based 
on the concept of space is the concept of quantity in 
general ; and the relations of quantities are among the 
most easily comparable. Accordingly, not only have 
the scier.ces of abstract quantity, — arithmetic and 



Reasoning. 219 

algebra, — long ago attained exactness, but other sciences 
become exact precisely in so far as their reasonings take 
the form of quantitative calculations. 

II. Since it thus appears that reasoning is essentially 
identical with the universal process of intelligence, it 
must have a certain affinity with those other forms of 
intelligence, the ordinary perceptions and generalisaiions, 
which have been analysed in the immediately preceding 
chapters. Still there is of course also a certain 
difference between either of these forms of intelligence 
and reasoning. That difference consists in the fact, 
that reasoning is a more complicated comparison. The 
superior complication of reasoning may be expressed by 
saying, that it is not, like judgment, a comparison of 
concepts, but a comparison of judgments. This analysis 
of reasoning has perhaps never been more clearly 
expounded than by Mr. Herbert Spencer, who describes 
the process as a comparison, not of terms, ,but of 
relations.* Of course this description is not sufficient 
always to distinguish reasoning from judgment, or even 
from conception ; for these are often the results of 
reasoning. Still, reflective reasoning implies previous 
concepts and judgments, even if, as when they are 
general, they have been formed by previous reasonings, 
reflective or unreflective. 

From this it follows that the account of the reasoning 
process given by logicians cannot be taken as a psychol- 
ogical analysis. In the common textbooks on logic, 
reasoning is described as a comparison of two terms with 
a third in order to their comparison with one another. 



* Principles of Psychology, Part vi., Chapters 2—8. The 
doctrine is perhaps foresha.lowed by Ilobbes. See, besides hia 
Computation, the Leviathan, p. 30 (Moles worth's edition). 



220 Psychology. 

Now, for logical purposes such a description may be con- 
venient and useful. That is a question which the psycho- 
ogist need not discuss. But no psychological analysis 
tfould completely exhibit the nature of reasoning, which 
did not point out that it implies a comparison of two 
relations or judgments. Then the premisses are to be 
regarded as representing the two relations, and the con- 
clusion in reality expresses their relation or comparison. 
To illustrate, let us exhibit the syllogism under the form 
which it would take from this analysis. Let P = major 
term, S = minor term, and M = middle term. Then 
the following formula would represent a syllogism in the 
first figure : — 

M is P, 
S is M, 
.-. S is P. 

This, according to the above analysis, would run into 
the more complete formula : — 

S : M : : M : P ; 

and that, of course, is equivalent to 

S : M = M : P. 

If the syllogism were negative, as 

M is not P, 
S is M, 
.". S is not P, 

then the relation of S : M would be represented as un- 
equal to the relation of M : P. 

This will perhaps be clearer in the case of quantitative 
reasonings. Take, therefore, a very simple algebraical 
process : — 



Reasoning. 221 

4* + 2 =3* + 4 (i) 

.•.4* — 3* = 4 — 2 (2) 
.-. * = 2 (3) 

Here it is evident that the operation is a procedure in 
thought from (1) to (2), and from (2) to (3). Each of 
these three stages in the procedure, however, is an equa- 
tion, that is, a relation or judgment of equality ; and the 
procedure from one to another involves the comparison 
of each with that to which it leads. The reasoning, 
therefore, in this instance, if fully expressed, would run 
thus: — 

(4*+ 2) : (3* + 4) : : (4*— 3*) : (4—2), 
and 

(4*— 3*) : (4—2) : : x : 2. 

This simple operation may be taken as a type of quanti- 
tative reasonings in general, for the most elaborate calcu- 
lations are simply a lengthening out of the same process. 
It appears, therefore, that all quantitative reasonings, in 
applied as well as in pure mathematics, involve a similar 
comparison of equations more or less numerous. But 
quantitative reasonings differ from others only in the 
fact, that they exhibit the reasoning process with the 
great advantage of absolutely exact terms \ and, conse- 
quently, all reasoning is analysed into a comparison, not 
of terms merely, but of judgments. 

III. All the varieties of the reasoning process are 
usually regarded as modifications of two fundamental 
types, — one proceeding from the general to the particu- 
lar, and called Deduction j the other, from the particular 
to the general, and called Induction. But some recent 
writers, following Mr. Mill,* recognise an inference from 

* Syiem of Logic -, Book ii., Chap, iii., § 3. 



222 Psychology. 

particulars to particulars, maintaining even at times, that 
all reasoning is of this nature. Now, there can be no 
doubt of the fact, that a procedure of this sort does occur 
in consciousness. It may even be admitted that it is 
probably more common than a definite ascent to the 
general, or a definite descent to the particular. Take, 
for illustration, one of Mr. Mill's own examples, the 
reasoning implied in the proverb, that "a burnt child 
dreads the fire." It is well known that one or two 
experiences are sufficient to associate in a child's mind 
the appearance of a fire with the painful sensation of 
burning, and that any subsequent sight of the fire will 
probably suggest the thought that the touch of the fire will 
be followed by the former pain. Any of the more intelli- 
gent among the lower animals can go through this process. 
The actuality of such a mental process, then, is not a 
matter of doubt. The only question is as to the pro- 
priety of calling it reasoning. It may appear at first as 
if this were merely a question of words ; but, as in many 
similar cases, a failure to distinguish by different terms 
phenomena that have only a superficial resemblance may 
lead to serious confusion of thought. Here there is an 
essential difference between the mental processes that 
would be included under one term. In one process a fact 
is simply suggested by another fact in accordance with the 
unconsciously operating laws of association ; in the other 
process a fact is thought as founded on a certain reason. 
The latter is appropriately called reasoning, because it is 
the consciousness of a reason. Whether the former, — 
the mere suggestion, — should also be called reasoning, 
may not be considered a question of prime importance ; 
but it is certainly important to distinguish, in some un- 
mistakable way, processes so essentially different as those 
described. Mr. Mill himself explains that, whenever the 



Reasoning. 223 

reason of proceeding from particulars to particulars is 
sought, that reason is to be found in a general proposi- 
tion with reference to the whole class of phenomena to 
which the particulars belong ; and it is more in accord- 
ance with the use of language, as well as more convenient 
for scientific purposes, to restrict the term reasoning to 
those transitions of consciousness, in which a reason for 
the transition is thought. Consequently, when any 
reasonings are spoken of as unreflective, this expression 
must be understood in a qualified sense. When any 
process which simulates reasoning, is absolutely unre- 
flective, — when it is a simple transition of consciousness 
without any reflection on its reason, — it ought, in psycho- 
logical analysis, to be degraded to a mere suggestion. 

The common distinction between Deductive and In- 
ductive Reasonings may, therefore, be retained, and 
more closely examined. 

1. Deduction is not, as often represented, a mere peii- 
tio principii. It is that process of thought, in which the 
reason of a particular fact is found in a general fact, that 
is, in a whole class of facts in which the particular fact is 
contained. The mistake of representing this as a mere 
begging of the question has probably arisen from the 
supposition, that the general reason must be, or usually 
is, thought before the particular fact. This supposition 
itself may have its origin in the confusion between the 
artificial formulae of logic and the natural processes of 
consciousness. Commonly at the present day logicians 
state the parts of a syllogism in the order of Major Pre- 
miss, Minor Premiss, Conclusion ; and for logical 
accuracy this may be a proper artifice. But even among 
logicians this order has not been always maintained ;* 

* See Hamilton's Lectures on Logic, Appendix x. 



224 Psychology. 

and no philosophical logician holds that that is the ordef 
in which alone men can think, or in which alone they 
actually do think. 

Deduction, then, is a real process of intelligence, even 
though its chronological procedure may usually be from 
particular fact to general reason. Its possibility and its 
actuality arise from the same cause as the possibility and 
actuality of judgments, namely, because we do not always 
think explicitly all that is implicitly involved in our 
thought. A deduction simply unfolds to consciousness 
what consciousness may not have previously realised as 
part of the extension or of the intension of a concept ; 
and the deduction may often be of incalculable theoretical 
or practical importance. For, though it is common to 
make fun of the stock-example in logical text-books, 
'• All men are mortal : Caesar is a man ; and therefore 
Caesar is mortal," yet it is often a crisis of unutterable 
meaning in the mental life of a man, when he substitutes 
for the mere symbol Ccesar^ father, mother, brother, 
sister, friend, and for the first time the thought flashes 
into consciousness, that one of these must die, since all 
men do. 

2. Induction is properly that process in which the rea- 
son of a general proposition is thought to be the obser- 
vations made in reference to the particulars which the 
proposition includes. In actual conscious life this pro- 
cess admits of numerous varieties in its stages ; and the 
norm, by which it ought to be governed in order to 
guard against error, forms the subject of Inductive Logic. 

Though Induction and Deduction are thus disting- 
uished for scientific purposes, it is not to be supposed 
that they always, or even commonly, exist apart in actual 
thinking. Not only is the intermingling of the two pro- 
cesses evident to psychological observation, but the logi- 



Reasoning. 22$ 

cian also recognises Deduction as playing an indispen 
sable part in most of the processes by which general 
truths are established, even if the philosopher does not 
claim that every Induction is based on some primal 
Deduction. 



226 Psychology 



CHAPTER IV. 



IDEALISATION. 

THE term, Idealisation, is here employed to 
designate the latest and fullest outgrowth of 
intellectual life, in which the earlier and simpler activities 
culminate. It is not, indeed, to be regarded as sharply 
separable from these in the actual operations of the 
mind, any more than these are always separable from 
one another. In the evolution of these activities the 
simpler forms of idealisation are perpetually anticipated ; 
but it implies something which is not explicitly exercised 
in these, and represents, in its maturer developments, the 
highest reaches of intelligence. After attaining percep- 
tions of the individual and conceptions of the general, 
after ratiocinative transitions from one to the other, 
intelligence learns to combine in one cognition both of 
these products of its activity ; the individual becomes 
transfigured with a higher glory by being viewed as the 
exponent of general laws, while these lose their dead 
abstractness by being seen in the concrete particulars, in 
which alone they have any living reality. 

The use of the term, idealisation, to express this 
activity of intelligence, may be explained by reference to 
its original meaning. Idealisation is literally, the 
formation of an ideal. Now, an ideal is an object 



Idealisation. 227 

which receives its determinate character from an idea, as 
this term is understood in its earlier and higher significa- 
tion.* But in this signification idea means the general 
concept which, in the Platonic philosophy especially, was 
supposed to constitute the real essence of every individual 
in a class, f An ideal is, therefore, an object which is 
thought as an embodiment, not of particular accidents, 
but of universal principles. 

Accordingly, such an object implies the prior formation 
of the general concept which it embodies. The general 
concept is the end which the intelligence seeks to realise 
in determining the ideal object. But the object thus 
aimed at is various, and it varies in accordance with the 
various activities of intelligence, of which it is the end. 
These activities may be purely speculative, concerned 
merely in the exercise of intellect ; or they may be 
aesthetic, concerned primarily with the feelings ; or they 
may be ethical, concerned immediately with the direction 
of the will. Finally, there may be an activity of still 
larger scope, as embracing all these three, and aiming at 
an ideal which absorbs the ideals of all the others. This 
activity may be named religious. The ideal of the first 
activity is truth absolute, that is, an absolutely harmoni- 
ous system of thought ; of the second, it is beauty, that 
is, an absolutely harmonious gratification ; of the third, 
it is goodness, that is, an absolutely harmonious object 
of volition. Of the supreme activity of the human spirit 



* See Kant's Kritik der reitien Vemunft, pp. 419—422, ed. 
Hartenstein. 

t On the history of the word idea the materials for an interesting 
sketch will he found in Sir W. Hamilton's edition of Relets Works, 
Note G. Compare also Hamilton's Discussions, pp. 69 71. 



228 Psychology, 

the ideal is God, that is, a being who comprehends all 
goodness and beauty and truth. 

This chapter naturally divides into four sections. 

§ i.— -The Speculative Ideal 

As already stated, the ideal of all intellectual exertion 
is truth. But truth, as its etymology implies, is an 
activity of mind; it is what a mind tioiveth.* We have 
seen, however, that all the intelleetual activities hitherto 
analysed involve consciousness of relation. A percep- 
tion, even in the simplest form, is a consciousness of 
resemblance between a past and a present sensation, — a 
recognition of a past sensation in the present. Generali- 
sation is a consciousness of resemblance between different 
phenomena, which are on that ground thought under one 
category or class. And reasoning was shown to be a 
consciousness of resemblance between relations. All 
cognitions are thus reducible to a consciousness of rela- 
tions, which increase in complexity with the development 
of intellectual life. 

But every consciousness of relation is not cognition. 
To make it cognition, the relation must be not merely 
an accidental coexistence in an individual consciousness ; 
it must be independent on the accidents of an individual's 
mental life ; it must be valid for universal intelligence. 
In a word, it must be, not a subjective association, but 
an objective connection. Such a consciousness is truth, 
knowledge, science. 

Accordingly, the endeavour after truth is an effort to 

* Trowetk, trowth, tronth, and troth are old spellings of truth. 
Piers Plowman uses, on one occasion, even the seemingly para- 
doxical expression, "many a fals treuthe," which is, of course, 
merely many a false trowing or opinion. 



Idealisation. 229 

bring all our consciousnesses — all our trowings — not only 
into harmonious relation, but into such connection, that 
they shall all be thought as dependent on, necessitated 
by, each other. All scientific research sets out with the 
assumption, that every truth is in thinkable unison with 
every other; and scientific effort would be at once 
paralysed by the suspicion, that there is any factor of 
knowledge which, in the last analysis, may be a surd 
quantity, incapable of being brought into intelligible rela- 
tion with the general system of thought. The labours of 
science, therefore, aim at discovering to consciousness 
this reciprocal connection of different truths ; and the 
intellectual ideal is thus a system of thought, in which all 
cognitions, that is, all truths, all objective connections, 
are conceived as component factors of one self-conscious- 
ness. Such a system is absolute truth. 

Here it would be out of place to sketch such a system, 
even in general outline. This is the work of philosophy, 
not of psychology. Our interest is limited to the mental 
process, by which such a system unfolds itself in 
consciousness ; and it now appears that this process is 
merely an inevitable outgrowth of that conscious com- 
parison, which constitutes intelligence universally. 

§ 2.— The ^Esthetic Ideal 

The aesthetic ideal is beauty, and this has been already 
described as an absolutely pure gratification. Now, our 
gratifications — our pleasures — as well as our pains, arise 
from the exercise of our various powers in accordance 
with a law which will be investigated in the next part of 
this book. It will thus appear that a pleasure, to be 
pure, that is, to be free from any alloy, must be disin- 
terested ; in other words, it must be dissociated from all 



230 Psychology. 

the interests of life, speculative and practical, higher and 
lower alike. The lower interests are associated most 
closely with the struggle for individual existence, the 
higher with the struggle for social existence. The lower 
are. therefore, what are commonly understood as selfish 
interests; the higher as unselfish, social, moral. The 
two may be briefly spoken of as egoism and altruism re- 
spectively. ^Esthetic gratification, as pure or harmonious, 
must be free from any incongruity either of egoism or of 
altruism. The activities, on which it depends, as has 
often been pointed out since Schiller's time, are of the 
nature of play* in which exertion has no end beyond 
itself, finding complete satisfaction in the pleasure which 
itself produces. 

That aspect of the aesthetic consciousness, in which it 
is considered as a mere feeling of pleasure, relegates it 
to the next part ; but it has another aspect too. In so 
far as it is a consciousness of an object qualified to give a 
pure gratification, it involves an intellectual factor, the 
quality of the object being what is understood by beauty. 
It is this intellectual side of the aesthetic consciousness 
that comes under consideration at present. 

Intellectually this consciousness is often described as 
imagination. As this term seems to imply merely the 
unaltered representation of what has been formerly pre- 
sented in consciousness, psychologists have been accus- 
tomed to give explicitness to their language by disting- 



* See Schiller's Briefe uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Mens- 
chen, especially the sixteenth letter. It is this suggestion of 
Schiller's that forms the germ of Mr. Herbert Spencer's account 
of aesthetic feeling {Principles of Psychology, Part viii., Chap, ix.), 
of which a detailed exposition is given in Mr. Grant Allen's volume 
on Physiological Esthetics, 



Idealisation. 



231 



uishing such unaltered representation as simple or 
reproductive imagination, while the imagination, implied 
in aesthetic consciousness, is described with varying pro- 
priety as productive, creative, poetic, plastic, artistic. This 
form of idealisation will also be found, on analysis, to be 
merely a mode of the general processes of intelligence, — 
association and comparison. 

1. The materials of productive imagination, when not 
supplied immediately by perception, — and then of course 
they imply the associations and comparisons of all 
perceptions, — are given by representations, that is, by 
simple imaginations, suggested by the laws of association. 

2. But there is more implied than the unmodified re- 
production of former cognitions, and it is this additional 
factor of imagination that is intended to be expressed by 
such terms as productive and creative. It is true that, 
in one respect, the mind cannot be said to create or 
produce anything, as it cannot give existence to, any 
materials which it has not originally received from sense ; 
and for this reason the term plastic has been suggested 
as more descriptive of its operation.* But by rearranging 
the materials once given to it, imagination does create 
for these a new form ; and in this sense the artistic mind 
may be truly spoken of as creative : it is this power of 
originating arrangements, which to itself are new, that 
constitutes the originality of any mind. This creative 
process must now be analysed. 

Under analysis this process discloses so many forms, 
more or less complex, of that fundamental function of 
intelligence, which has been so often referred to already 
as comparison. This function is involved, not only in 

* Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. ii., pp. 262, 
498, 500. 



232 Psychology. 

those identifications and discriminations which the 
original materials of imagination imply, but in a peculiar 
and distinctive mode. The original materials are com- 
posite wholes, which must be decomposed into parts, in 
order that these may be recombined into new wholes. 
But this decomposition is simply one of the functions of 
comparison or thought ; it is the separation or discrimi- 
nation of parts from one another. In like manner the 
recombination of the parts into a new whole is a further 
function of comparison ; it is the identification of corres- 
ponding parts of different wholes. This may be illustrated 
by taking one of the less complex operations of imagina- 
tion, such as the creation of one of the simpler 
forms of fabulous animals. What, for example, is 
implied in the imagination of a centaur? First of 
all, there are, to start with, two original wholes — the 
human figure and that of a horse. The two figures are, 
in thought, separated into parts. The upper part — the 
bust — of man is conceived as having a certain analogy 
with the upper part — the head and neck — of the horse ; 
while the respective lower parts are likewise conceived as 
analogous. The parts of one figure are thus made 
alternately to supplant, and to be supplanted by, corres- 
ponding parts of the other ; and by this comparison there 
is created for thought a new imaginary form of animal. 

While this simple creation illustrates the nature of the 
process implied in all artistic productions, it must not be 
supposed that they are all so easily analysed. On the 
contrary, many of these are so complex as to elude the 
most subtle analysis. This may be evinced more clearly 
by observing that the wholes analysed in the work of 
imagination are of two kinds, which may be distinguished 
as quantitative and qualitative. 

1. A quantitative whole, which was variously named, 



Idealisation, 233 

by older writers, integral or mathematical, is one whose 
parts exist out of each other in space, and are therefore 
really separable. The treatment of such wholes by the 
imagination has just been illustrated in the fiction of 
fabulous animals. Even in higher efforts a similar 
analysis and synthesis sometimes find scope. The 
sculptor or painter of an ideal will naturally study the 
peculiarities of figure in the objects most celebrated for 
the particular type of beauty which he wishes to produce ; 
and the features of t his new creation may be suggestions 
gathered from a great variety of such objects. This 
appears in the fact, that the ideal of every age and 
country receives its distinctive character from the 
realities with which the artist must have been most 
familiar. 

2. But the more complicated productions of imagina- 
tion imply also, and more genera'ly, the analysis and 
synthesis of qualitative wholes. These have been some- 
times called physical or essential Their parts are quali- 
ties which, as not existing outside of each other in space, 
are separable only in idea, not in reality. Thus colour 
and figure, as attributes of the human body, are parts of 
a qualitative whole ; and so are thought, feeling, desire, 
virtue, vice, as attributes of the human soul.* It is evi- 
dent that all art, in so far as it gives expression to the 
spiritual life, must deal with this kind of whole. 

The play of intelligence in producing its own ideal 
world is thus found to be that analysis and synthesis — 
that discrimination and identification — which we have 
found to be the function of intelligence that excites the 
aesthetic emotions ; and the attribute of beauty, with 

* On this distinction of wholes see Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures 
p« Metaphysics, Vol. ii., pp. 339-40, with the authorities citerj. 



234 Psychology, 

which it clothes its objects, has been therefore not untruly 
described as unity in variety. This description, indeed, 
is one of those abstractions winch are far too general to 
be of much service in definition. It implies merely that 
any particular object of beauty, or the universe conceived 
as beautiful, must exhibit, amid all its variety, that unity, 
in virtue of which alone it is intelligible — in virtue of 
which alone, in fact, it is an object at all. Still some 
importance may be claimed, even for this very general 
implication. It brings the aesthetic ideal into harmony 
with the speculative. It shows that the beauty of any- 
thing has a certain affinity with its truth — that permanent 
aesthetic gratification must be derived, not from the tran- 
sient fancies which particular men entertain about things, 
but from that insight into the real nature which things 
disclose to universal intelligence. 

The direction, which the aesthetic play of intelligence 
takes, is determined by circumstances which can be dis- 
covered only by an investigation of particular cases ; and 
such investigation must be left for the biographers of 
artists and the historians of art. The various products 
of aesthetic intelligence are spoken of as the fine arts in 
contradistinction from those in which utility is the ideal, 
and which are described as mechanical. But it has often 
been remarked that the two ideals are frequently com- 
bined, and that a more intense aesthetic satisfaction 
results from the consciousness that the beauty of an 
object is due to the same arrangement which gives it 
utility. This coq bination can be easily explained. For 
utility is the adaptation of means to an end. It is, there- 
fore, an extremely definite form of that unity in variety, 
which we have seen to be characteristic of beauty. 

It is common to distinguish the fine arts in accord- 



Idealisation. 235 

ance with the materials they employ, or — what amounts 
to the same — the faculties which they address. This 
principle divides them into three classes. For all the 
arts either use the two most intellectual senses which 
have been sometimes inaccurately spoken of as the sole 
sensible organs of beauty, or they address themselves 
directly to the imagination through the ordinary medium 
of language. 

I. The arts, which address themselves to the eye, are 
three, — sculpture, architecture, and painting. From the 
nature of vision these arts are subject to a peculiar res- 
triction ; they are limited to the situation of a moment. 
All motion, all change, all that is unfolded through time, 
is excluded from the immediate scope of these arts ; they 
can tell of any event which occupies time merely what is 
capable of being apprehended in the arrangement of cir- 
cumstances at a particular instant. This limitation, of 
course, imposes a peculiar difficulty on the artist : it re- 
quires him to select from the evolution of any phenom- 
enon that moment, at which its whole meaning will be 
most completely suggested to the spectator. What 
moment best fulfils this condition, — the opening, the 
middle, or the close of a development, — is a problem of 
technical interest, which need not be discussed here. 
But the task affords the artist an opportunity of working 
one of the most potent charms within the reach of human 
skill. He can snatch from the ceaseless currents of time 
any moment of peculiar significance, and preserve some- 
thing of its living power for the perennial enjoyment of 
human sight. It is but with sober truth, therefore, that 
Wordsworth exalts the function of the painter: — 

" Thou, with ambition modest yet sublime, 
Here, for the sight of mortal man, hast given 



2 $6 Psychology. 

To one brief moment caught from fleeting time 
The appropriate calm of blest eternity."* 

There is probably, moreover, in every product of time 
some moment, which is more amply suggestive than any 
other, at least for the particular purpose of the artist ; and 
an additional significance is given to his craft, when he 
frees that moment from its natural mutability, and imparts 
to it an ideal permanence. Although, therefore, it may 
be with a little youthful extravagance, it is not without 
an important meaning, that Schelling, in one of his earlier 
writings, observes : — " Every product of nature has only 
one moment of true perfect beauty, one moment of full 
existence. In this moment it is what it is for ail eternity; 
beyond this there comes to it only a growth and a decay. 
Inasmuch as art presents the essence of the thing in that 
moment, it lifts it beyond time j it makes it appear in its 
pure being, in the eternal form of its life." f 

i. Of the three arts included under this head the most 
limited in its range is sculpture ; for it gives up the infin- 
itely varied effect of colour, which is one of the chief 
sources of the painter's power, as well as the aid which 
he obtains from a background as a setting to his figures. 
The sculptor is limited to mere form for the expression of 
his conceptions. But it is the human form that he em- 
ploys, and this includes muscular development and 
attitude. These, however, are ordinary natural expres- 
sions, and often the most pathetic expressions of human 



* Miscellaneous Sonnets, ix. 

+ Ueber das Verhallniss der bildenden Kunste zu der Nalur 
(Werke, Erste Abtheilung, Vol. vii., p. 303). A good story in 
point is told of Wordsworth. Being asked, on one occasion, 
whether he had not written some verses on a daisy, he replied, with 
lome warmth, "No, it was on the daisy, — a very different thing ! " 



Idealisation. 23/ 

emotion; so that the range of the sculptor's power is 
larger, and its intensity deeper, than the limitation of his 
material might at first lead us to suppose. 

2. Architecture is akin to sculpture in the material it 
employs, but perfectly distinct in the effect at which it 
aims. Leaving the definiteness of the human figure, 
founding its combinations rather on the forms of external 
nature, it is necessarily more vague in its effects on the 
mind, awakening more of sentiment than of clear concep- 
tion. It is an often quoted saying, that architecture is 
" frozen music ; " and its affinity with music in the pre- 
ponderance of its emotional over its intellectual effects 
gives a certain significance to the expression. Architec- 
ture, therefore, takes rank with music among the arts 
which have served as handmaids to religion, fitted as it 
is by the mysterious vagueness of its effects to stimulate 
" the spirit that worketh in us with groanings which can- 
not be uttered." There is a kindred sublimity in the 
ideas associated with public order in any community, 
forming as it does a human type of the vaster order of 
the universe. Not inappropriately, therefore, has archi- 
tecture been employed among all nations in the sen ice 
of political welfare for the purpose of adding its imposing 
effects to the institutions of government. 

3. There is a certain restriction attached to painting 
which does not belong to architecture or sculpture. 
Representing objects on a plane surface, it is limited to 
a single point of view. But this defect is more than 
counterbalanced by the superior advantages of the art. 
For while it is unrestricted in regard to the kind of 
figures with which it deals, its power is greatly enhanced 
by its being able to represent these in their native 
colours and in all the setting of the world by which they 
are surrounded in reality. By the variety of its figures, 



238 Psychology. 

therefore, by combining these with their actual surround- 
ings, by exhibiting them in all the coloured light in 
which they would naturally be seen, painting is endowed 
with greater power than any other art to bring the visible 
world, in all its life-like reality, before the mind. 

II. In music, — the art which addresses the ear, — time 
is involved as essentially as it is excluded in the arts 
which address the eye. The flow of sound is sometimes 
spoken of as an ideal movement, and a considerable part 
of musical gratification is due to rhythm or periodicity, 
that is, the separation of the whole time occupied by a 
musical composition into equal intervals. The general 
effect of music on the mind may well be described as 
mysterious, for it presents a problem which is very far 
from being satisfactorily solved. But as that effect is one 
that touches the feelings rather than the intellect, it will 
appropriately come up again for discussion at a later 
stage. It need only be said here, that tones constitute 
the material of the musical artist in the same sense as 
form and colour in the arts that address the eye, and that 
the musical ideal is a product of the same intellectual 
analysis and synthesis, which form the process of artistic 
production in general. 

III. The art, which uses language as its material, may 
be named literature, for want of any more expressive 
designation. The term poetry might be appropriate, 
were it not so commonly used with exclusive reference 
to a versified structure of composition. For the aim of 
poetry is to produce an aesthetic gratification by the mere 
play of intellect and feeling stimulated by the suggestions 
of language. But literature in all its forms has some 
immediate end in view, narration or exposition, argu- 
ment or exhortation ; and the more artistically it is con- 
structed for the attainment of this end, the more nearly 






Idealisation. 239 

does it approach the character of poetry from the 
aesthetic gratification with which the end is secured. 
Accordingly, the descriptive narratives in which the his- 
torian makes the past live again before his reader's 
imagination, the illustrations by which the scientific 
expositor enables us to see throughout the world the 
manifold operations of a vast natural law, — all such 
literary achievements are the source of an artistic 
pleasure. Even a well-connected mathematical demon- 
stration, or a bare statement of scientific facts arranged 
into clear system, may possess some charm of art. 

Literature is not, like the other arts, limited to the 
materials of a single sense. Addressing itself directly to 
the mind through the most familiar and most intelligible 
form of human expression, it claims for its use, not only 
the materials of all sensation, but every feeling and 
thought, every mental state and act, that is capable of 
being suggested by words. It cannot, indeed, repro- 
duce the visual aspects of a remote object or a past 
scene with the vividness which may be given to these by 
painting or sculpture, nor can it stir the soul with the 
uncontrollable emotions which music excites ; but its 
range is unrestricted by any of the limitations within 
which these arts are confined. It can evan, by what has 
been somewhat significantly named word-painting, pro- 
duce with some success a visual image of what is distant 
in space or time; and the pictures, thus conjured before 
the imagination, instead of being limited to an instan- 
taneous situation, may range through any period, and be 
quickened with all the liveliness of movement, of change. 
It can also, by the euphonious combinations of language 
even in prose, and still more by the measured euphony 
of verse, produce a certain musical effect ; while by 
making the tones of language ring to the march of 



24O Psychology. 

historical events, to an unfolding chain of argument, or 
to the illustration of an universal truth, it can enlist 
intellect in the work of emotion, and direct an emotional 
outburst to its aim with a certainty which is impossible 
under the vague impulses of music. 

It is scarcely necessary to add that the artistic 
character of literary composition is due to that intellectual 
analysis and synthesis which are the source of all art. 
Even the simplest grammatical syntax, as the name 
indicates, implies an intelligent discrimination of the 
parts of speech and their combination into a sentence; 
while the term composition, which is commonly used, not 
only for the syntax oi words in a sentence, but for the 
arrangement of sentences in the treatment of an extensive 
theme, points also to the nature of the intellectual 
operation which literary work involves. The experience 
of the literary man is often a painful illustration of the 
wearisome toil which must be undergone to collect his 
materials and marshal them in an order intelligible to 
himself before he can make it intelligible to his readers; 
while the wearisome toil, which unfortunately a reader 
must often undergo, is an equally painful illustration of 
failure, on the part of the literary workman, to master his 
materials by the detailed research and the intelligible 
combination necessary to artistic work. 

The remarks in this section have been of necessity 
limited mainly to the aesthetic consciousness of men in 
general, without entering at length on the specialised 
consciousness of the artist. The importance of artistic 
production in human life, and the special character of 
the culture which it implies, have raised the subject into 
the rank of a special science. For the technical 
examination of the principles of art, the student must 



Idealisation. 241 

consult any of the numerous works on aesthetics or on 
the several arts. 

§ 1.— The Ethical Ideal 

The nature of volition is a subject reserved for discus- 
sion at a later stage. There it will appear that a volition 
is a self-conscious act, — an act of a being who knows what 
he is doing, knows the end which his act is designed to 
attain. It is not to be supposed that every phenomenon 
in human life, which is called action, answers to this 
description. Many so-called actions involve no conscious 
direction towards an end. Whether or not such pheno- 
mena can in strictness be called actions, they are not 
volitions ; and therefore a volition is an intelligent act, — 
an act directed by intelligence of an end to be reached. 

As the actions of men are various, various also are the 
ends which they seek to attain. But as the end is 
always one that is sought by an intelligent being, it 
must be in some sort adapted to his intelligence. 
His intelligence, however, can take cognizance, not 
merely of the end to be attained by any particular action, 
but also of the remoter consequences which are linked 
with that end by an indissoluble chain of causation. 
Consequently, every being, who is capable of intelligently 
directing his conduct, governs it not merely by purposes 
of the moment, but by reference to results of far larger 
scope. It is, in fact, scarcely possible to conceive an 
intelligent act which is exhausted in its immediate end. 
Is it the blow of a hammer, the thrust of a spade into 
the soil, a walk from one point to another, a child's exer- 
cise over the alphabet, or a statesman's address to a 
legislature ? the meaning of all such acts is usually ex- 
plained by results that are not to be reached for hours, 
for days, or, it may be, for years. The intelligent agent, 

Q 



242 Psychology. 

therefore, seeks a rule of conduct which is of permanent 
value, and not merely of ephemeral use. 

But the intelligent rule of conduct is thus not only 
lengthened in its scope ; it is also widened. For the 
actions of a man bring him into manifold reciprocity 
with his fellows ; and consequently he finds that his con- 
duct cannot but have a reference to others as well as to 
himself. This necessary reference to others inevitably 
expands, as does the necessary reference to his individual 
circumstances. As his intelligence cannot limit itself to 
the wants of the moment in seeking a rule for the guid- 
ance of his conduct, so it cannot restrict itself by a re- 
gard for a limited circle of other persons, to the disregard 
of all outside. The same imperious necessity, which de- 
mands of the intelligent being, that his conduct shall be 
intelligent, refuses to let him rest content with any rule 
which is of limited application to himself or to others. 
It is not in accordance with the claims of intelligence, it 
is not reasonable, that any one moncr.t, or any one per- 
son, should alone be considered in acting. The intelli- 
gent agent, therefore, finds satisfaction only in a rule of 
conduct which is of universal application, — a rule giving 
him an aim for one moment which is not discordant 
with the aims of any other, — an aim for himself which 
does not conflict with the aims of other persons. This 
is that absolutely harmonious end, — that realisation of 
universal law in the particular act, — which constitutes the 
ethical ideal. 

The preceding remarks are not, of course, to be taken 
as an exhaustive analysis of the ethical consciousness. 
This mental state always involves an element of feeling, 
which is not only often predominant, but even at times 
completely submerges the intellectual factor. The na- 
ture of the moral feelings will come under consideration 



Idealisation. 243 

again ; but even the intellectual side of the moral con- 
sciousness must not be supposed to be exhausted in the 
above analysis. The analysis brings out one feature of 
the rule which the moral consciousness seeks for the 
guidance of action ; it shows that that rule is one of uni- 
versal application. But this is a mere form, to which 
specific contents must be supplied. For we are not told 
what end is that which can be universally prescribed for 
human conduct. Is it pleasure or perfection, is it respect 
for self or respect for others, is it the will of the Infinite 
Being, or the laws of nature, or the conditions of success 
in the struggle for existence ? These are questions which 
need not be discussed here ; they carry us beyond psy- 
chology into the domain of ethics. 

But, in addition, it must be observed that the above 
analysis brings out mainly the pure form of the moral 
consciousness, — the form towards which the evolution ot 
that consciousness tends. The process of evolution, how- 
ever, both in the individual and in communities, reveals 
many impure or imperfect forms in ordinary mental life. 
A great part of history is necessarily devoted to tracing 
the development of this consciousness towards its ideal 
universality, as well as the effect of such development 
on the institutions and customs of communities ; while 
general literature derives much of its interest and pathos 
from its pictures of the infinitely varied stages of moral 
culture, and of the tragic or comic results which these 
produce in human life. For as this consciousness is the 
authoritative controller of conduct, we have in it the 
most potent influence in giving a permanent character to 
the organisation of society. Accordingly, in our social 
institutions, — in the family, in the State, in international 
law, in the Church itself considered as a corporation of 
human beings, — we have so many realised expressions, 



244 Psychology. 

more or less perfect, of the moral consciousness. These 
institutions, however, are of such importance in human 
life, that they form the subjects of separate sciences ; and 
for further discussion of them the student must be referred 
to philosophical jurisprudence and politics. 



§ 4. — The Religious Ideal. 

The ideals, examined in the three preceding sections, 
all indicate the tendency of intelligence, as it develops, 
to seek the universal in the particular, to interpret the 
particular in the light of the universal. In its purely 
speculative activity the aim is simply to know, — scimus 
ut sciamus, — without reference to any ulterior end, — any 
application of the knowledge obtained ; and of this 
activity, as has been seen, the ultimate ideal is the 
harmony of each particular knowledge with universal 
intelligence, that is, its comprehension in one self- 
consciousness. In the practical activity of intelligence, 
as explained in last section, the aim is one ulterior to 
mere knowledge, — sri?nus ut opeiemur, — we make use of 
our knowledge as a rule of conduct ; and of this activity 
the ultimate ideal was shown to be the harmony of each 
particular rule with universal practical intelligence, or, 
in other words, the comprehension of all rules in one 
self-consciousness. Besides the speculative and practical 
activities of intelligence, the second section explained 
another activity, which has no interest of a speculative 
or of a practical kind in view, the ultimate end of which 
is, in short, nothing beyond the play of intelligence 
itself. The beauty, which is the ideal of this activity, 
implies the harmony of each particular object of 



Idealisation. 245 

intellectual play with universal intelligence, that is, the 
comprehension of all in one self-consciousness. 

These various forms of idealisation are thus found to 
harmonise in so far as they all imply in the individual 
intelligence a reference to an universal intelligence ; and 
every advance to a larger truth, to a fairer beauty, to a 
more perfect rule of life, is an evidence of the aspiration 
of the individual towards the standpoint of the universal 
mind. When this aspiration becomes an explicit fact of 
consciousness, it formj the religious spirit in man ; and 
its ideal is therefore that Universal Mind, in whom all 
the speculative and practical and aesthetic ideals of the 
human consciousness are realised. 

This sketch is not, of course, given as a complete 
analysis of the religious consciousness, any more than 
the analysis in the preceding section was supposed to 
exhaust the contents of the moral consciousness. Like 
the moral consciousness, the religious consciousness also 
contains a large emotional element ; and the various 
forms of emotion, which enter into its structure, will be 
noticed at another time. In its historical evolution, 
moreover, the religious consciousness undergoes even 
stranger modifications than the moral consciousness; and 
its influence upon the life of men, — on the recluse as 
well as on the man of the world, on commercial enter- 
prise as well as on schools of thought, on social customs 
and political institutions, — has been among the most 
extensive and permanent of the forces, by which human 
history is moulded. For whatever may be decided, on 
more accurate inquiry, with regard to a few savage tribes, 
which are said to be without any form of religious belief, 
and though it is claimed for some speculative minds, 
that they are uninfluenced by religious ideas, yet no nation 
without religious institutions has ever taken a prominent 



246 Psycliology* 

place in the world's history ; and there does not seem, 
therefore, to be any normal human development, which 
does not evolve some consciousness of the relation 
between the finite mind and the Infinite. The manifold 
influences of this consciousness must be traced either in 
works which treat of history in general, or in the special 
histories of religion. Here we deal with the religious 
consciousness merely as a fact in the mental life of men. 
The true interpretation of this fact, its validity as evi- 
dence of any objective reality, is a problem which takes 
us beyond the limits of psychology. In fact, the whole 
subject of the religious consciousness opens up a vast 
range of other than psychological questions, which are of 
such importance as to constitute a separate science, or 
rather the cyclopaedia of separate sciences known under 
the name of ±heoi'&£y« 



Illusory Cognitions. 247 



CHAPTER V. 



ILLUSORY COGNITIONS. 

AN illusion, as the name implies, is a state of con- 
sciousness, in which, though apparently informed, 
one is not really so, but is rather played 7cil/i, made 
sport of, befooled. It is true, the term is used by 
some writers in a more restricted sense, which will 
be noticed immediately ; but the more general appli- 
cation continues to hold its ground, while it is more 
accordant with the etymology of the word. It will at 
least be found convenient to describe as illusory all 
those mental states, which simulate the appearance of 
knowledge without giving us re?l information. In dis- 
cussing these phenomena we shall, first of all, make 
some remarks on their general nature and classification, 
then describe and explain some of the most familiar, 
such as dreams. 

§ 1. — Illusions in General. 

Illusory cognitions may be distinguished according to 
the sources from which they arise. These are three. 
Sometimes it is the senses that are at fault in creating 
the illusory impression. At other times the mistake 
originates in an intellectual process erroneously interpret- 
ing a normal impression of sense ; while in a third class 
of cases the error lies wholly in an irregular intellectual 



248 Psychology. 

process. To the first of these mental states the name 
hallucination is often given by recent psychologists j the 
third comprehends the fallacies commonly described in 
logical text-books; while for the second the term illusion 
is sometimes specifically reserved. This distinction is 
one which cannot always be rigidly carried out. The 
hallucinations, arising from the abnormal activities of 
sense, merge imperceptibly at times into the illusions 
which imply a misinterpretation of sensuous impressions ; 
and these again are often indistinguishable from fallacious 
processes of reasoning. The fallacies may be here left 
out of account, as they form a doctrine specially reserved 
for logic, and appropriately treated as a subsidiary illus- 
tration of logical rules. We shall endeavour to reach 
some outline of the phenomena comprehended under 
hallucinations and illusions, in the strictest sense of these 
terms. 

(A) Hallucinations originate in the raw materials of 
knowledge, in the fact that the mind is furnished with 
erroneous data. They imply, therefore, some abnormal 
excitation of sense. Sensations of the same kind as 
those which are normally excited by external objects, 
may sometimes be abnormally excited when no object is 
really present Many, if not most, of the phenomena 
designated spectres or apparitions may be ascribed to 
this source. An object may appear in consciousness 
either when, or when not, actually present ; in other 
words, the appearance may be either real or unreal. A 
spectre or apparition is an unreal appearance. 

Here will be evident the difficulty of regarding halluci- 
nations as due to sense alone; for whenever an object, 
even though imaginary, is created out of sensations, 
whether normal or abnormal, an intellectual activity is 
implied. Still hallucinations imply that the sensibility is 



Illusory Cognitions. 249 

at fault, and we must trace the source of its abnormal 
excitements. These must be referred to conditions in 
the organs of sense. Now, such conditions are reducible 
to two heads, — the limitation or the variation of the sen- 
sibility of an organ. 

I. The sensibility of the organs is limited in space, in 
time, and in degree. 

1. Organs are limited in regard to space by the extent 
to which the subdivision of their nerve-fibres is carried. 
Resulting from this some illusory impressions were 
noticed in treating the sense of touch. Thus, at an ob- 
tuse part of the skin two points may be felt as merely 
one; and on an acute part the distance of two points 
appears greater than on an obtuse part. 

2. The limitation of sensibility in time arises from the 
facts that an impression must endure a certain length of 
time to excite consciousness at all, and that it tends to 
endure a certain length of time before it can be suppjant- 
ed by another. 

(a) Of the first fact numerous instances have been 
furnished in the phenomena of instantaneous suggestion, 
resulting from nvariable association, which play such a 
prominent part in forming many of the familiar percep- 
tions, especially of sight. 

(b) Of the second fact examples vary in the different 
senses. It was shown that the less intellectual senses do 
not recover rapidly from the effect of an impression, their 
inferior intellectual capacity in fact consisting in this slow 
recuperative power. It is in consequence of this, for 
example, that tastes cannot be readily distinguished in 
quick succession. Sights, sounds, and touches, on the 
other hand, were shown to be easily distinguishable, even 
when simultaneous j but this is the case only when the 
intensity of these sensations is of that moderate degree 



250 Psychology. 

which intellectual processes require. When an impres- 
sion is unusually strong, it is apt to produce one or othei 
of two effects j it either deadens the sensibility, or it en- 
dures after its external cause is removed, mingling with 
other impressions that immediately supervene. Of the 
former effect a curious example is found in the pheno- 
mena called sfirtra. When the eye has been intently 
fixed on any object of some brilliance, on its being with- 
drawn we are apt to see, after a short interval, an image 
of the object in complementary colours, as if the sensi- 
bility of the eye to the natural colours of the object had 
been exhausted. Thus, a red object leaves an after-image 
or spectrum of bluish-green colour; a white object 
against a black ground is succeeded by a spectrum of 
dark hue against a light ground.* The other effect here 
noticed, — the fusion of sensations in rapid succession, — 
is most easily produced in the case of unusually powerful 
impressions, but shows itself also when these are of 
moderate strength, as illustrated by the thaumatrope and 
other optical toys referred to above.f In explaining the 
production of tones, moreover, it was shown that some 
forty vibrations in a second form the limit of the discri- 
minative power of the ear. 

3. From the preceding remarks it is implied that the 
sensibility has a limit in regard to intensity. As already 
explained,:}: such a limit forms a condition both of sensi- 
bility and of the discrimination of sensations. As a con- 
dition of sensibility the limit of intensity is two-fold, on 
the side of excess as well as of defect. For not only is 



* A very full account of these phenomena will be found in Helm- 
holtz's Physiologische Ofitik, pp. 337-386. 
t Book i., Part ii., Chapter i., § 2. 
% Book i., Part i., Chapter i., § & 



Illusory Cognitions. 251 

a certain strength of stimulus necessary to produce any 
sensation, but a certain weakness also. An excessively 
strong stimulus, or one continued long, either deadens 
the sensibility, as we have seen, or destroys at least the 
special sensibility of the organ affected, supplanting it by 
some general sensation of pain. A certain difference of 
intensity is also necessary to the discrimination of sensa- 
tions ; and this is the difference which an attempt has 
been made to formulate in a psychophysical law. 

II. But not only is there a limitation of the sensibility ; 
it is also subject to variations that are dependent on 
numerous conditions. This variation is noticeable both 
in the degree and in the kind of sensibility which an 
organ displays. 

1. The sensibility may be either exalted or lowered in 
degree. 

(a) The exaltation of sensibility, which is technically 
called hyperesthesia, is due to various causes.. In 
health it is the common and valuable effect of attention 
directed to any organ or its sensations. The reinvigora- 
tion also, derived from rest, especially from sleep, com- 
municates a healthy heightening of the sensibility ; and 
it is perhaps largely due to this that, for example, the 
morning seems to impart an increased brightness to the 
colouring of nature. Sometimes the heightened sensi- 
bility of an organ is due to the semi-morbid state of ex- 
cessive fatigue, while its more abnormal causes are to be 
found in morbid nervous conditions like hypnotism or 
those induced by the numerous stimulants and poisons 
which act on the nerves. It would take us too far into 
the special pathology of mind, were we to enter on a de- 
tailed account of the hallucinations arising from this 
source. 

{b) The opposite effect, a depressed sensibility, has 



252 Psychology. 

been less appropriately called a?iczsthesia. The discussion 
of it also belongs to the pathology of mind j for its effects 
are among the most familiar hallucinations of mental 
disease. 

2. There, are, however, also certain variations in the 
kind of sensibility which an organ may exhibit. Thus in 
the eye there is frequently met the chronic deficiency 
called colour blindness, while it is also subject to such 
well-known temporary derangements as that'produced by 
jaundice. In the ear, also, there occurs a defect which, 
by its analogy with colour-blindness, might be called 
tone-deafness.* For such alterations of sensibility the 
name -paresthesia lias been suggested. 

The conditions of the sensibility, which originate hal- 
lucinations, are thus found to be various. They are by 
no means confined to disease ; occasionally remarkable 
hallucinations surprise persons in sound health. The 
general soundness of health in such cases is evidenced 
by the fact that the patient is not deceived by the hal- 
lucinations, but sometimes even holds them under such 
complete control as to make them come and go at will. 
Thus Earl Grey used to be haunted by the vision of a 
gory head, which vanished, however, at his bidding. It 
is generally difficult, often impossible, to discover any 
explanation of these hallucinations in sane life ; but the 
difficulty is obviously due to our ignorance of all the 
circumstances in which the patient happened to be at 
the time. It may be fairly conjectured, however, that in 
such cases there must be some peculiar discharge of ner- 
vous energy, arising from an emotional outburst or a 
volitional effort, which the patient may never have 



* See observations by Mr. G. Allen on a case of this defect in 
Mind for April, 1878. 



Illusory Cognitions. 253 

dreamt of connecting with the hallucination, or perhaps 
from some constitutional tendency of which he may be 
ignorant. But if we cannot generally discover the stimu- 
lating cause of hallucinations, it is often possible to 
account for the peculiar form they assume. This form 
depends on the sense that is affected by some cause, 
known or unknown. Now, the sense is often determined 
by a person's habits. Thus, a painter generally sees hal- 
lucinations, while a musician hears them.* Sometimes 
in the heat of composition Dickens heard his characters 
speak ; f and Taine mentions that the French novelist, 
Gustave Flaubert, while writing the story of Emma 
Bovary's poisoning by arsenic, became twice so veritably 
sick as to vomit his dinner.| From the fact that most of 
our impressions of the real world are received through 
the sense of sight, it might be suprw^d that most hallu- 
cinations must be visual ; but it is questionable whether 
auditory hallucinations are not more frequent. There 
are strong reasons for believing that such is the case, at 
least in disease ;§ and, though the reverse is said to hold 
good in health, yet this assertion seems by no means 
established.|| Professor Huxley states that to him hallu- 
cinations of hearing are more common than visual appari- 
tions ; % and the experience of many others will probably 
be found to accord with his in this respect. 

Though there are many hallucinations of ordinary life 



* Wundt's Physiologische Psychologic, Vol. ii., p. 354 (2nd ed.). 

+ Maudsley's Physiology of the Mind, p. 293. 

X Taine's De /' Intelligence, Vol. i., p. 90 (4th ed.). 

§ Maudsley's Pathology of Mind, pp. 371-6. 

|| Sully's Illusions, p. 119, note. 

II Elementary Lessons in Physiology, p. 267. 



254 Psychology. 

which cannot be accounted for, yet there are also many 
the source of which is obvious. In next section it will 
appear that the peculiar hallucinations of dreaming often 
admit of being traced to their source ; and in fact the 
hallucinations of waking life are sometimes evidently the 
slowly fading residues of a dream, the excitement of 
nerve being prolonged even after the real world has 
broken in upon consciousness. Dr. Abercrombie men- 
tions the case of a man who, while sitting up late one 
evening, fell asleep, and had an unpleasant dream, in 
which a hideous baboon figured. Startled into complete 
wakefulness, he walked to the middle of the room, where 
he continued to see the baboon against the wall for about 
half a minute.* After wakening in the middle of a dream 
I have sometimes amused myself by dwelling upon the 
vanishing dream-figures which retained almost the vivid- 
ness of reality for some minutes, provided the eyelids 
were kept closed.! It will probably be found that most 
of the common hallucinations, whether of hearing or of 
sight, experienced by persons in ordinary health, come at 
those moments of deep reverie, which approach in char- 
acter the condition of sleep. 

Although many hallucinations of ordinary waking life 
do not obtrude any definite peculiarity of nerve to 
account for them, yet in most cases which have been 
subjected to careful investigation the patient's health has 
furnished some explanatory fact. Thus, a gentleman, 
who was subject to epileptic fits, and therefore to some 



* Abercrombie's Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Pozuers, 
p. 278 (13th ed.). 

t A similar survival of dream-images after waking has been ob- 
served by Spinoza {Opera, Vol. ii., p. 216, ed. Bruder), and by Dr. 
Maudsley {Physiology of the Mind, p. 292, note). 



Illusory Cognitions. 255 

painful disorder in the brain, found his attacks generally 
preceded by the spectre of a little woman in a red cloak 
striking him on the head with a crutch.* A lady, on 
being attacked with an acute inflammation in her left 
side, saw the traditional skeleton-figure of Death strike 
at her diseased side with a dart.f Dr. Maudsley men- 
tions an analogous hallucination of smell. A r gentleman 
of perfectly sound mind in other respects was tormented 
by the apparently groundless fancy that he was a source of 
annoyance to all his friends and neighbours by reason of 
a horrible odour emitted from his person. After some 
months an abscess formed on the lower part of the 
sternum, indicating the growth of some latent disease 
which had probably been the source of the " subjective 
odour." J It may, therefore, be inferred that even those 
hallucinations of ordinary life, which are seemingly the 
most inexplicable, would yield the secret of their origin 
to a thorough scientific investigation. That the explana- 
tion of these hallucinations merely requires to wait for 
further knowledge of the persons interested, is strikingly- 
evinced by a fact connected with the history of Dr. Aber- 
crombie's work on the Intellectual Powers. In the earlier 
editions an account is given of some inexplicable hallu- 
cinations, to which a gentleman of sound mind was sub- 
ject ; but between the fourth and fifth editions of the 
work the development of a serious cerebral disorder 
clearly indicated the source of the hallucinations.§ 

(B) Illusions are distinguished from hallucinations by 
the fact, that in the former the senses are not at fault, 
the illusory effect arising solely from the erroneous in- 

* Abercrombie's Intellectual Powers, p. 284. f Ibid., p. 286. 

X Maudsley Pathology of Mind, pp. 376-7. 
§See p. 276, 13th ed. 



256 Psychology. 

tellectual process which misinterprets a normal im- 
pression of sense. In the first chapter of this Part, 
while illustrating the formation of ordinary perceptions, 
we have had such numerous opportunities of noticing 
and explaining illusory cognitions of this sort, that it is 
unnecessary to dwell upon them at further length here. 
We may accordingly proceed to describe some of the 
most familiar states of consciousness, in which hallucina- 
tions and illusions hold sway. 

§ 2. — Dreaming. 

Among the facts of our mental life, which derive their 
peculiar character from being composed mainly of 
illusory cognitions, a prominent place must be assigned 
to dreams ; and the analysis of these will be found to 
furnish the fundamental principles, on which a large 
cumber of others should be explained. In the analysis 
of dreaming it will be of some advantage to describe the 
distinctive peculiarities of the state, before proceeding to 
indicate the psychological principles which furnish their 
scientific explanation. 

(A) The peculiarities which commonly distinguish 
dream-fancies from those of waking life, are two. The 
first is the fantastic combination of circumstances by 
which dreams are usually characterised ; the second is 
the irresistible appearance of their reality. 

I. The former of these is so obtrusive a characteristic 
of dreaming, that in our waking life any improbable 
fancy is very commonly described as a dream. All the 
ordinary probabilities of the real world, whether founded 
on internal character or external circumstances, are set 
at naught in the world of dreams. Here the coward 
achieves deeds of heroic courage, while the brave man is 



Illusory Cognitions. 2$7 

mortified by the meanness of his poltroonery. The 
guilty sometimes dream of an innocence which is un- 
happily unknown to them in real life, while the pure 
mind is shocked at times by dreaming of being seduced 
into the most improbable sins. The untravelled lover 
of domestic comforts often spends his nights in wander- 
ing over the face of the earth, while the restless wanderer 
settles down to the quiet routine of home. The man, 
who in the real world was never known to be guilty of 
an eccentric action, rides in his sleep along the edge of 
precipices, seats himself on dizzy pinnacles, rushes into 
mad encounters with wild beasts, and exposes himself to 
all sorts of ridiculously needless dangers. In like man- 
ner there are no external restrictions — no obstacles of 
time or space — in the world of dreams. A few seconds 
carry us round the globe ; and the events of years may 
be packed into a single night, or even into a few minutes. 
Persons who are separated by a hemisphere in space, or 
even by centuries in time, enter into familiar intercourse 
in the dreamer's society ; and those friends, who have 
long ago passed beyond the veil, descend to him from 
the spirit-world as readily as they are supposed to come 
for the purpose of rapping upon tables at a spiritualistic 
seance. We pass from place to place in our dreams as if 
we were charmed by the cap of Fortunatus or shod in 
three-league-boots ; we spurn all ordinary modes of loco- 
motion, for we can float through the atmosphere as 
easily as if aerial navigation were no longer among the 
problems which have yet to be solved. Whether in its 
pleasanter or in its sadder aspects, the conditions of 
human life are extravagantly exaggerated in our dreams. 
They make us drink at times a draught of horror which 
is happily too large for the measured cup of actual woe ; 
and they enchant us again by the revelation of ecstasies 

R 



258 Psychotog)>. 

which transcend in beauty and in joy the sober realities 
of human life. 

It thus appears that the dreamer creates for himself a 
world which is governed by laws of its own. The only 
laws which he cannot set aside are the laws of his own 
mind. But it must not be supposed essential to a 
dream, that it should possess this fantastic character. 
In familiar experience, dreams are often marred by no 
improbability which would render them impossible as 
real events. This fact, though at first sight apparently a 
difficulty in any theory of dreams, will be found to assist 
in their explanation. 

II. The second characteristic of dreams is the irre- 
sistible appearance of their reality. This illusory reality 
is so strong, that it is not weakened by any improbability, 
however extravagant. The strength of the illusion is 
also strikingly evidenced by two analogous facts, both of 
which are familiar in the experience of nearly all 
dreamers. The first is the fact that often, as the real 
world breaks in upon the middle of a dream, we find 
ourselves in doubt for a moment whether the dream is 
not a reality — in other words, which is the dream-world, 
which the real. Analogous to this is the other fact, that 
often a real event, especially if it has been of an extra- 
ordinary character, seems long afterwards like a dream ; 
and, indeed, most men have probably been in doubt at 
times with reference to some such event, whether it was 
a dream or a reality. 

The same remark, however, which was made about 
the former peculiarity of dreams, must also qualify this : 
the appearance of reality is by no means absolutely 
essential to a dream ; sometimes we are conscious that a 
dream is unreal. This apparent anomaly, instead of 



Illusory Cognitions, 259 

being a difficulty, will be found rather to assist in the 
explanation of dreams. 

(B) In proceeding to such an explanation it is desir- 
able to bear in mind that the course of thought in sleep 
as well as in waking hours is governed by the laws of 
association. If you fancy any event or scene in a day- 
dream, its detail must all be suggested in accordance 
with these laws ; and so are all the details of any event 
or scene in the dreams of sleep. It is desirable also to 
rem:r ber, that a sensation requires merely some action 
in a nerve ; and if this action can be produced by any 
internal excitement, without the presence of an external 
body, the same result will follow as if an external body 
were there. Such " subjective sensations " have been 
already noticed in the preceding section as the source of 
hallucinations. 

Keeping these facts in view, we are prepared to ex- 
plain the characteristics by which dreaming is dis- 
tinguished from waking consciousness. The explanation 
is evidently to be sought in the peculiar condition of 
body and mind which sleep implies. Sleep is a cessation 
of activity in the brain, as well as generally in the nervous 
system to which the b~?.?n belongs. The thoughts and 
feelings which make up our waking life imply a large 
consumption of those elements of food which go to 
supply nerve and brain. After this has gone on for a 
considerable part of the twenty-four hours, the brain and 
nerves have spent most of the force at their disposal, 
and do their work more feebly. You may stimulate 
them for a time by tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, agree- 
able conversation, exciting work, and other artifices; but 
at last they cease work from pure exhaustion. The 
nerves of hearing, sight, and touch are no longer affected 



260 Psychology. 

by ordinary sounds, sights, and contacts; all thought, 
all consciousness fades away. 

Now, it is known that the brain becomes comparatively 
bloodless in sleep, while there is a partial return of blood 
to its vessels when the sleep is disturbed by the imper- 
fect consciousness of dreams ; and the quantity of blood 
in its vessels becomes greatly increased with the perfect 
restoration of consciousness on awaking. Dreaming is, 
therefore, a state in which we are half-asleep and half- 
awake — sufficiently awake to have some consciousness, 
but sufficiently asleep to be unable to control the direc- 
tion of our consciousness. In this we have an explana- 
tion of the generally admitted fact, that most dreams 
take place at the transition from waking to sleep or, 
perhaps more commonly, from sleep to waking. 

I. Here, then, we have an obvious explanation of the 
first characteristic of dreams, their ludicrous improba- 
bility. The state of the dreamer is evidently one in 
which the mind is comparatively torpid — is doing little 
or no work. " Dreams are the children of an idle 
brain."* Now, when the mind is doing good work, 
we do not surrender ourselves to every idle fancy that is 
suggested ; on the contrary, we resolutely exclude every 
thought which is not connected with the work of the 
mind ; we control the direction of our thoughts. But in 
a torpid or inactive state of mind we let our thoughts 
take any order in which they happen to be suggested. 
Such a state we often indulge in during our waking 
hours ; and it resembles dreaming so obviously, that 
popular language calls it a daydream, or by the French 
equivalent of reverie. The improbable character of the 
pictures, with which we allow ourselves to be amused in 

* Romeo and Juliet, Act i., Scene 4. 



Illusory Cognitions. 261 

such reverie, is witnessed by the fact, that the man who 
indulges in them is said to be building castles in the air 
or chateaux en Espagne. If our thoughts can form such 
fantastic combinations even during our waking life, when 
we never lose control of them altogether, is it wonderful 
that they run into an utterly lawless riot when the tor- 
pidity of the mind leaves them undirected by any active 
purpose ? 

The state of the dreamer's consciousness, then, is one 
in which the higher function of thought or comparison, 
implying (as the third part of this Book will shon) 
voluntary control, is dormant, and only the more 
mechanical function of association is active.* After the 
lengthy analysis of our perceptions, it need not be re- 
peated that the meaning of an impression on any sense 

* It is one of the fine comparisons of Hegel that discovers an 
analogy in waking and sleep to the great cosmic phenomena of day 
and night. At night the mere mechanical forces, on which the 
existence of the earth in the planetary system depends, continue 
their movements : but the subtler forces, connected with the 
calorific, actinic, and optical action of light, cease ; and organic 
life in plant and animal is affected thereby. Leaving the plant out 
of account, we find that, in the animal, as in the vast cosmic bodies 
during night, it is only the forces necessary to existence that con- 
tinue during sleep — the forces of organic life. The higher forces of 
animal life — sensibility and irritability — cease. Now, the soul — 
the consciousnesss — in so far as it is a natural phenomenon, has an 
analogy with the other phenomena of nature. Its lower functions 
do not cease in sleep ; sensation, and even ideas that have been 
originally the result of intellectual processes, may still be excited ; 
but they are arranged solely by the laws of suggestion, not by the 
categories of the understanding. The higher function of reason — 
comparison — by which sensations are interpreted in their real rela- 
tions, is dormant. Ideas appear merely in subjective, fortuitous, 
superficial association ; things lose all necessary, objective, rational 
connection. (See Hegel's Encyklop(zdie> § 398.) 



262 Psychology. 

depends on our interpretation of it ; and as that inter- 
pretation implies a somewhat complicated intellectual 
effort both of comparison and suggestion, we cannot be 
astonished that it is beyond the sluggish intellect of the 
sleeper. As a dream is a partial disturbance of sleep, 
some at least of the senses are sufficiently roused to stir 
in consciousness sensations which are generally so 
obscure as to be all the more easily misinterpreted ; and 
the misinterpretation is commonly directed by any sug- 
gestion that happens to predominate at the time. That 
this origin of dreams is no mere conjecture, but a familiar 
fact, is implied in the delicious fancy of Queen Mab, as 

" She gallops night by night 

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love ; 

O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on courtesies straight ; 

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees ; 

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. 

Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, 

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit ; 

And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, 

Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, 

Then dreams he of another benefice. 

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, 

And then he dreams of cutting foreign throats, 

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, 

Of health's five fadom deep ; and then anon 

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes." * 

If we took the necessary trouble, we might often, without 
calling in the aid of any poetical fiction, trace a dream 
not only to its originating sensation, but also through the 
suggestion from which it received its peculiar shape. Thus 
Dr. Gregory relates that in earlier life he had ascended 
Mount Vesuvius, and during the ascent had felt the heat 



Romeo and Juliet, Act i., Scene 4. 



Illusory Cognitions. 263 

of the mountain on his feet. Long subsequently he had 
read an account of Mount Etna, though he had never 
seen it. Some time afterwards he went to bed one night 
with a vessel of hot water at his feet ; and during the 
course of his sleep he dreamt that he was walking up 
Mount Etna, and felt the ground under his feet warm. 
On another occasion he mentions that he had read an 
account of the Hudson's Bay Territory, which gave a 
vivid description of its severe climate. One night, shortly 
afterwards, he dreamt of being in that territory, and 
suffering intensely from the cold ; he awoke, and found 
that in his sleep he had kicked the bedclothes off.* 

The obscure sensible impressions, which thus suggest 
fantastic interpretations in the torpid mind, will easily 
explain those horrors of dream-life which have their 
source in the various painful sensations of indigestion. 
To such obscure impressions also can be referred that 
large class of horrid dreams which go by the name* of 
nightmare, in which the common circumstance is an 
effort to do something, with the feeling of inability to do 
it. These dreams will be generally found to arise from 
impeded respiration. The sleeper is lying on his back 
or face, or in some other position in which his chest can- 
not freely expand to allow a full inhalation; and naturally, 
therefore, he has a dim sensation of endeavouring to 
perform the most essential of the vital processes, while 
there is some difficulty in its performance which he 
cannot overcome. This sensation is of course enhanced 
if there is the additional oppression arising from a 
flatulent or overloaded stomach. But the general result 



* Abercrombie's Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual rowers, 
p. 201. 



264 Psychology. 

is the same in all, varied only according to the habits or 
circumstances of each individual.* 

Other facts of dream life receive a similar explanation. 
It is well known, for example, that questions addressed 
to a dreamer, especially if they are connected with the 
subject of his dream, will often elicit answers which 
show that the question has been heard, and has even 
become mixed up with some of his amusing fancies. It 
is also a familiar experience of many, that they can 
waken at a fixed hour by determining upon it before 
going to sleep. This would seem to imply that, notwith- 
standing the torpid state of the sensibility in general, a 
certain degree of wakefulness was preserved, sufficient to 
keep note of time, without preventing the refreshment 
of sleep ; and it is known that the dominant idea of 
rising at a particular hour occasionally gives shape to a 
dream. 

It was noticed above that, though dreams generally 
exhibit a whimsical character, yet this is by no means 
essential ; for the fictions of dreaming may often be less 
strange than the facts of real life. This is not at all 
inconsistent with the theory which ascribes the impro- 
bable caprices of dreaming to the fact of the mind being 
in such a dormant state that it is unable to control the 
directions of its thoughts ; for though thoughts, when 
uncontrolled, may run riot, yet it is quite possible for 
them to take a perfectly sober course. In fact, the 



* Nightmares with me take a turn which is evidently suggested 
by professional work. I am standing in front of an audience, who 
are waiting to hear me speak ; but, although often ideas and the 
words to express them seem to rise with greater readiness and 
brilliance than during waking hours, the most frantic efforts of the 
vocal organs fail to elicit a single sound. 



Illusory Cognitions. 265 

subject of a dream may sometimes control the direction 
of our thoughts, and produce thereby a concentration of 
mind, of which we are incapable amid the distractions 
of the waking world. As a result of this, it has been the 
testimony of several distinguished men, that in sleep they 
have seen their way through problems which had per- 
plexed their waking hours ; and Coleridge informs us 
that his poem of Kubla Khan was composed in a 
dream.* 

II. There still remains for explanation the second 
peculiarity of dream fancies, the irresistible illusion of 
their reality. This peculiarity, too, must be attributed to 
the "dormant state of the mind. This torpidity of mind 
implies two circumstances, which explain why the imagery 
of our dreams should appear so real in comparison with 
any imaginations of our waking consciousness. 

1. The first of these circumstances is the absence of 
any impressions from the real world to exhibit, by force 
of contrast, the unreality of the images which play before 
us in dreams. That the want of this contrast has to do 
with the illusory reality of dreams, must appear from the 
fact that a dream is instantaneously dispelled by any 
violent sensation, such as a loud noise, which suddenly 
rouses the dreamer to waking life. It is an interesting 
fact, which illustrates the same effect, that spectral 
illusions, which have tormented a patient in a darkened 
chamber, often vanish by simply letting in the light, and 
revealing thereby the realities around. 

2. A second circumstance connected with the condi- 
tion of the sleeper also accounts for the illusory reality of 
his dreams. The vividness, with which we can call up 

* Several facts of this sort are related by Mr. Dallas in The Gay 
Science, Vol. i., pp. 232-4. 



266 Psychology. 

an image of anything, depends, among other conditions, 
0:1 the sense, through which the image was first received, 
being occupied or not at the time. It is difficult to 
represent distinctly the visual appearance of anything, if 
the eyes are at the moment engaged in examining some 
actual object ; and this is the reason why many people 
instinctively close the eyes during intense efforts of 
thought or recollection. It is equally difficult to recall 
distinctly a tune while the ears are being assailed with 
actual music or loud talk ; and the same fact is notice- 
able in the case of the other senses. It is, indeed, for 
this reason that we can generally study to better pur] ose 
amid quiet surroundings and familiar scenes. Now, in 
sleep the senses are so torpid that they disturb us very 
little with impressions from the outside world at all; and 
therefore any images that are suggested, being allowed to 
absorb the consciousness, become as vivid as if they 
were produced by real objects. An interesting result 
occasionally follows from this. By one of the Secondary 
Laws of Suggestion we have seen that, the more vivid an 
idea is, it becomes the more powerfully suggestive ; and 
therefore it sometimes happens that facts are suggested 
in a dream, which had been totally forgotten in waking 
life. Several interesting anecdotes are told of persons 
who recovered in a dream important information regard- 
ing events which they had fruitlessly endeavoured to 
recollect when awake.* 



* Some of these are preserved by Abercrombie (Inquiries 
Concerning the Intellectual Powers, pp. 205-1 1 ). Dr. O. W. 
Holmes relates a story of a lost bond having been recovered by its 
owner recollecting, during the excitement of drowning from which 
he was saved, the place where it had been laid (Mechanism in 
Thought and Morals, p. 75). 



Illusory Cognitions. 267 

But how is it that sometimes a dream loses its decep- 
tive reality, and we become aware that it is a dream ? 
That such is not infrequently the case, must have been 
the experience of most dreamers ; and there have been 
instances of men, tormented by nightmare, who have 
succeeded in vanquishing its delusions by resolving, as 
they went to sleep, that they would treat its horrid 
fantasies as harmless unrealities. Dr. Reid relates 
that in his early life, being tormented almost every 
night for a while by frightful dreams, he resolved to try 
and remember that his terrors were unreal. After some 
fruitless efforts he was at last successful ; and " often," 
he says, " when I was sliding over a precipice into the 
abyss, I recollected that it was all a dream, and boldly 
jumped down."* Such effects are obviously to be ex- 
plained from the circumstance that the dreamer is not 
only half-asleep, but also half-awake, and that he tends 
either to relapse into the unconsciousness of profound 
slumber, or to struggle into the distinct consciousness of 
waking life. Now, if the latter should be the course of 
his dream, and if he is not suddenly startled into com- 
plete wakefulness, there will often be a stage in his 
dream-life, at which its spectres continue to hover before 
his mind, but he is sufficiently aroused to be perfectly 
conscious of their spectral nature. It will generally be 
found, in fact, that the dreamer wakens immediately 
arter realizing that his dream is a dream. 

Perhaps it would be regarded as an incomplete dis- 
cussion, which did not refer to those remarkable coin- 
cidences between dreams and real events, which play a 
conspicuous part in the literature of modern spiritualism. 

* Letter in Stewart's Account of the Life and Writings of 
Thomas Reid, near the end. 



268 Psychology. 

It cannot be denied that such coincidences have oc- 
curred, in which dreams seem to have contained prog- 
nostications with regard to future events, or information 
about contemporary events taking place in another part 
of the world. But it should not be forgotten that it is 
seldom, if ever, possible to tell how much a good story 
of this sort may have been embellished even by the 
original narrator, and still more by imaginative story- 
tellers. Moreover, it must be remembered that, while 
we hear all the remarkable coincidences between dreams 
and real occurrences, we seldom hear of those dreams 
which had all the appearance of being significant and 
yet turned out after all to be meaningless foolery of the 
imagination. I have known instances of dreams which 
at the time deeply impressed the dreamers with the 
events, and were found to indicate nothing but a little 
indigestion or an uneasy position of the body. Indeed, 
when it is borne in mind that there are probably several 
hundred millions of dreams every night, perhaps we 
ought to wonder, not that such coincidences are so 
many, but that they are so few. Besides, such dreams 
are practically worthless. Like the prophecies of Cas- 
sandra, they are fated to be received with incredulity. 
Few men will go even the length of Antigonus : — 

11 Dreams are toys ; 
Yet for this once, yea superstitiously, 
I will be squared by this." * 

For who is to determine when a dream is a trustworthy 
informer, and not merely " a false creation proceeding 
from a heat-oppressed brain " ? 



* Winters Tale, Act iii., Scene 3. 



Illusory Cognitions, 269 



§ 3. — Hypnotic States, 

The term hypnotic, from the Greek word for sleep, was 
suggested by an eminent English surgeon, Mr. Braid, to 
describe a class of phenomena which have their source 
in a nervous condition resembling sleep. The affinity 
between these phenomena and dreams is so remarkable, 
that the former will be found to have received the chief 
part of their explanation in the treatment of the latter. 
At the same time, hypnotic phenomena are so interesting 
in many respects that they deserve a separate considera- 
tion. We shall, therefore, first describe their distinctive 
peculiarities, and then inquire how these may be ex- 
plained. 

(A) In studying the characteristics of hypnotism, we 
come upon one that is fundamental. 

I. This primary characteristic is a nervous condition 
resembling ordinary sleep. The condition may be in- 
duced either involuntarily by some disorder of the 
nervous system, or voluntarily by some artifice of a 
monotonous character, such as is often adopted for the 
purpose of overcoming sleeplessness. 

I, Of the hypnotic states which come on involuntarily 
the most familiar is common somnambulism. The fact 
of walking in sleep, which is alone expressed by this 
term, although a common phenomenon, is by no means 
an essential or distinctive characteristic, of the state. 
Frequently it consists in mere talk during sleep, and at 
this stage can scarcely be distinguished from those 
dreams in which the dreamer is heard speaking, at times 
in reply to questions. An interesting case in point is 
recorded of a military gentleman, whose brother-officers 
often amused themselves in directing the course of his 



270 Psychology. 

dreams by suggestions whispered into his ear.* This, 
though given as a case of ordinary dreaming, ought 
rather to be regarded as one of somnambulism j for the 
subject of the experiment was continually roused to 
action under the impulse of his suggested dreams. 

But there are also instances in which some of the 
most astonishing phenomena of somnambulism are ex- 
hibited without the patient leaving his bed. Such is the 
case of Agnes Drummond, than which there is perhaps 
nothing more marvellous in the history of the abnormal 
states of mind. This girl had evidently suffered some 
serious injury to her nervous system from an accident in 
early life. The effect of this was to rendjr her uncom- 
monly stupid in waking life, but subject to hypnotic 
attacks, in which she displayed an extraordinary ability 
of various kinds. While in an unusually profound sleep 
she was often heard producing with her mouth a skilful 
imitation of elaborate musical compositions which she 
had heard played by an itinerant fiddler, or discoursing, 
with great beauty of language and illustration, on every 
imaginable subject. \ 

More commonly, however, the somnambulist rises in 
his sleep,, and proceeds to perform various actions. Some- 
times the motive of his actions is undiscoverable ; but 
often they are such as he was occupied with during the 
day. The farmer ploughs or threshes, or does some 
other farm-labour. The school-boy sits dow r n to his 
task. The clergyman writes his sermon; the judge, his 



* Abercrombie's Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers, 
pp. 202 4. 

f Dugald Stewart's Works, VoL x., pp. cliii. -clix. See also 
Abercrombie's Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers, pp. 
232-5. Abercrombie does not give tbe girl's name. 



Illusory Cognitions. 271 

decision ; the author, a part of the bock on which he is 
engaged. The man of science works at, and sometimes 
succeeds in solving, the problem which is perplexing 
him at the time. 

Some patients are liable to paroxysms of an hypnotic 
character in waking life, and during these exhibit all the 
phenomena characteristic of nocturnal somnambulism. 

2. But it has been found possible to induce voluntarily 
a state essentially similar to ordinary somnambulism. 
The marvellous nature of many of the phenomena ex- 
hibited in this state has produced such an impression, 
not only on the popular mind, but on the minds of many 
scientific inquirers, as to upset their usual habits of 
scientific caution ; and as a result, various unscientific 
hypotheses have been suggested to account for the 
phenomena either by some occult force of nature or by 
some occult operation of one of the known forces. 
Among these hypotheses a prominent place must be 
given to that of Mesmer, who ascribed the phenomena 
to animal magnetism. Others, again — the representa- 
tives of the so-called electro-biology — held that electricity 
is the influence at work ; while the Baron Von Reichen- 
bach imagined the effects to be due to an universally 
diffused force, which, after the Teutonic god Odin, he 
named the Od or Odylic force. But the subsequent 
remarks will show that even the most startling pheno- 
mena of this slate do not require for their explanation 
any force beyond the known agencies which are at work 
in the animal and mental nature of man. 

Before proceeding further, however, it may be ob- 
served that some of the essential characteristics of 
hypnotism are found in many of those morbid social 
phenomena of an hysterical nature, which were often 
epidemic in ancient and mediaeval communities, but 



272 Psychology. 

are fortunately disappearing from the life of modern 
civilisation. 

II. It is evident that, while there is a certain resem- 
blance between the hypnotic state and ordinary sleep 
with its dreams, there is also a marked difference. While 
dreaming proper is a passive state in which the patient 
simply allows various images to pass uncontrolled 
through his consciousness, the hypnotic patient is always 
active ; and there is, therefore, a propriety in the expres- 
sion, which describes somnambulism as " a dream acted." 
How is this to be more specially defined ? It seems 
that, as in ordinary sleep, there is a general torpidity of 
the cerebro-spinal system, only that the torpidity of 
hypnotism is much more profound. But combined with 
this impassive torpidity of the cerebro-spinal system in 
general, there remains an abnormal activity in certain 
portions, or at least a capability in certain portions of 
being excited to abnormal activity. Accordingly, ideas 
are able to take an extraordinary hold on the somnam- 
bulist's mind, and to concentrate his whole mental and 
bodily energy in a degree altogether impossible in waking 
life. 

In the hypnotic state, therefore, the patient's mind is 
dominated by an idea or set of ideas, creating an irre- 
sistible conviction that he does or does not experience 
certain sensations, that he can or cannot do certain 
actions. In ordinary nocturnal somnambulism the 
dominant ideas are suggested, as in sleep, by obscure 
sensible impressions or by the laws of association ; and 
it is noteworthy that the mind is so absorbed in the 
dominant idea, that attention is scarcely ever given to 
any suggestion lying wholly out of its sphere. Still, it is 
possible for another person with some tact to control the 
ideas which sway the somnambulist; and this is com- 



Illusory Cognitions. 273 

monly done by the operator in artificial hypnotism. It 
appears that the muscular sense is that by which the 
operator can most easily work upon his subject ; and 
certainly many of the most marvellous phenomena of the 
hypnotic state are due to an almost preternatural exalta- 
tion of muscular sensibility and power. 

III. An additional peculiarity of this state is its dis- 
connection with the ordinary consciousness of waking 
life. This disconnection appears in two ways. 

1. It involves an oblivion in waking life of what has 
been done in the hypnotic state. The oblivion is fre- 
quently total, though there is sometimes a very vague 
reminiscence of something having taken place. But in 
all cases the oblivion is so complete as to constitute a 
practical separation of somnambulic acts from the per- 
sonality of the patient ; and, accordingly, in more than 
one instance homicides have been successfully defended 
on the ground of their having been perpetrated in a state 
of somnambulism.* 

2. But the disconnection of hypnotic and ordinary 
mental life is further evinced in the fact, that with the 
waking oblivion of hypnotic states there is often evidently 
a reminiscence in one such state of what has been done 
in another. 

It appears, therefore, that, while hypnotism exhibits 
an obvious affinity with sleep and dreaming, it is yet 
distinguished, on the one hand, by a completer torpidity 
than ordinary sleep, on the other hand, by a more active 
excitement than ordinary dreaming; and this extraordinary 



♦Dallas' The Gay Science, Vol. i., p. 234; O. W. Holmes' 
Mechanism in Thought and Morals, p. 41. See also Annates 
Medico-psychologiques for 1881, p. 468, cited in the Fortnightly 
Review for November, 1885, p. 646 (Am. ed.). 

S 



274 Psychology. 

activity in one part of the system, combined with extra- 
ordinary torpidity in the rest, produces a sort of double 
consciousness, disconnecting the normal from the ab- 
normal mental life of the patient. These are the pheno- 
mena which require explanation in this remarkable state 
of mind. 

(B) The true scientific spirit, in which to approach 
unusual phenomena, is that which, recognising all their 
extraordinary character, in so far as verified by accurate 
observations, yet seeks to account for them by known 
laws, rather than by the hypothesis of occult agencies, or 
occult operations of agencies that are known. Our object 
will, therefore, be to discover, in the ordinary mental life 
of man, phenomena sufficiently resembling those of 
hypnotism to warrant us in believing that both are due 
to the same causes. The needlessness of any hypotheti- 
cal agency to account for hypnotic phenomena is strik- 
ingly indicated by the results of a commission appointed 
by the French government to examine Mesmer's theory 
of animal magnetism. After a careful scientific investi- 
gation, this commission reported that all the phenomena, 
ascribed to the effect of magnetism on the human body, 
could be produced by simply miking persons imagine 
they were magnetised, even if the process of magnetising 
were not performed at all, while none of the phenomena 
were manifested when that process was really performed 
without the knowledge of the persons subjected to experi- 
ment. It is evident, therefore, that the phenomena in 
question were due to the mind being possessed with a 
certain idea. 

Accordingly, to find the analogues of hypnotic phen- 
omena in ordinary mental life, we must observe the effects 
which are commonly produced by the mind being ab- 
sorbed in one subject. These effects have been already 



Illusory Cognitions. 275 

in some measure referred to, where mental abstraction 
was analysed, and shown to be the complement or reverse 
of attention.* In this necessary union of attention with 
abstraction, we have a familiar parallel to the extraor- 
dinary concentration of the somnambulist's mind on one 
subject along with his equally extraordinary insensibility 
to everything else. This parallel will appear the moie 
significant, the more carefully it is followed into detail. 

In the first place, it has been already observed that the 
abstraction, which is the necessary counterpart of con- 
centrated attention, often reaches the extreme form of 
absentmindedness ; and authenticated instances of this 
mental condition do not fall very far short of the torpor 
which the somnambulist displays in regard to everything 
beyond the range of his dominant ideas. 

But it is the other side of these phenomena that chiefly 
requires to be considered in this connection. The effect 
of attention, in ordinary life, is to concentrate the energy 
of an individual to such a degree, that he is enabled to 
achieve results beyond the power of a distracted mind. 
Now, these results are sometimes not altogether out of 
proportion to those which flow from the intense mental 
concentration of the somnambulist. Even if we leave 
out of account the great achievements of science and art, 
which have been rendered possible by the power of in- 
tense concentration on the part of scientific and artistic 
minds, and which, from their originality, often imply in- 
tellectual activities of a more unusual character than even 
the marvels of hypnotism, there are familiar facts in the 
humbler mental life of every day, which give an insight 
into the source of these marvels. 



• See Chapter ii. of this Part, § |. 



276 Psychology. 

The intense mental concentration of the hypnotic 
patient often assumes the form of an overpowering 
belief that he can or cannot do certain actions. The 
increased ability and disability, which are thus gener- 
ated, are paralleled by the well-known effects of ex- 
cessive confidence and diffidence in daily experience. 
These effects are realised, in a homely form, which 
makes them familiar to all men, in games of skill. 
Success at the outset is one of the most important con- 
ditions of success at the close. The confidence thus 
awakened in the player's mind imparts an increased 
firmness to nerve and muscle, enabling him to direct his 
movements with precision ; so truly has it been said of 
those who make a good start, — 

" Hos successus alit ; possunt, quia posse videntur."* 

On the other hand, an unfortunate slip at the commence- 
ment of a game, on the part even of one who usually 
plays well, may often be observed creating a distrust in 
one's powers, — a feeling of anxious timidity, — which is 
almost sure to interfere with accuracy of stroke. This 
effect of confidence is, in truth, similar to that which is 
produced by any emotion powerful enough to concen- 
trate an individual's energies on one object. It is thus 
that under the influence of high enthusiasms men 
become capable of achievements, for which the tamer 
motives of everyday life are inadequate ; and occa- 
sionally a human career is blighted by a single 
crime, to which the criminal might never have been 
seduced but for the overmastering temptation of a 
moment. 



* Aeneid, v., 231. 



Illusory Cognitions. 277 

The irresistible subjection of the somnambulist's mind 
to a dominant idea often assumes the form of a belief 
that he does or does not experience certain sensations. 
This phenomenon scarcely requires any elucidation by 
reference to other spheres of mental life, after what has 
been said, in the first section of this chapter, on the 
hallucinations and illusions to which even the same mind 
is sometimes subject. Here a single additional remark 
may appropriately be made on the effect of mere 
imagination in creating actual sensations. Numerous 
instances are recorded of persons being made to feel 
sensations of almost every variety under the influence of 
strong conviction, and such instances could probably be 
multiplied from the experience of most men. It is, in 
fact, not an uncommon social amusement to find sport 
at a friend's expense by making him the victim of some 
harmless hallucination ; and any one may by an experi- 
ment of this sort discover how easily subjective sensations 
can be excited.* The ease with which a person may be 
thus victimised, is of a piece with the power which the 
mesmeric operator wields over his subject. 

Nor is the disconnection of hypnotic and normal 



*The Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers relate two such pleasantries, 
intended to exhibit imagination overriding sense. In one the 
victim is made to feel the taste of coffee, in another the smell of 
sulphur. (Vol. i., pp. 191-3). A remarkable case is known to me 
of a farm-servant who, treading inadvertently on a harrow, saw one 
of its prongs protruding through the upper leather of his boot. 
11 My God ! " he exclaimed, " I have got lockjaw ; " and fell into a 
sort of tetanic paroxysm. He was carried in this state into the 
house, his boot tenderly pulled off, when it was found that the 
prong had passed without hurting him between two of his toes. 
Yet it was some hours before he could free himself from the terror 
of lockjaw. 



278 Psychology. 

consciousness without a parallel in our ordinary mental 
life. The oblivion of hypnotic actions in waking life is 
analogous to the difficulty of reinstating at will moments 
of intense mental absorption, whether in intellectual 
work or in emotional outburst This difficulty is 
probably owing to the fact, that all such absorption 
involves an excessive waste of energy which is essentially 
destructive, and that the destructive nature of the state 
forbids its reproduction even in the fainter form of 
memory. It is from this cause that human character 
often presents combinations apparently the most incon- 
gruous. For the ecstasies of the enthusiast, however 
ennobling their influence might be, cannot be recalled 
with sufficient distinctness to exert that influence on his 
conduct ; and therefore his life may be separated into 
two parts, which seem not only quite distinct, but even 
antagonistic to each other. A fanatic of the type of 
Robespierre or a devout inquisitor may indulge one day 
in a gush of religious fervour, and the next find 
diabolical satisfaction in a butchery at which healthy 
human nature stands aghast.* 

The disconnection of hypnotic and normal conscious- 
ness is in some respects also illustrated by the phenomena 
of habitual and dexterous actions. These exhibit an 
accuracy which parallels that of the somnambulist's 
conduct, — an accuracy which disappears under any 
attempt at conscious direction as completely as the 
somnambulist's increase of power is destroyed by the 
restoration of normal consciousness. There is also a 
separation in consciousness between the actions that are 



* Some striking instances of such incongruous combinations in 
moral character are given by Mr. Lecky in his History of European 
Morals, Vol. i., pp. 305-8. 



Illusory Cognitions. 279 

done under the influence of habit and those that are 
governed by conscious volition, — a separation so com- 
plete, that we often go through a long series of habitual 
actions without being able to recall a single detail of the 
series. Even the fact that a patient in one hypnotic 
state can recall what he did in a previous state, — this 
connection of hypnotic states with each other, while they 
remain disconnected with ordinary consciousness, is not 
without an analogue in the phenomena of habitual 
actions. For it is often observable that, if we break 
down in the performance of such action, we start the 
whole series afresh with better prospects of success ; 
that is to say, by going back to the beginning, or to some 
well-marked point in the series, we endeavour to 
reinstate the condition of habitual activity in the hope of 
being able to proceed to the end of the series with that 
mechanical accuracy which we despair of attaining by 
any conscious direction. This is illustrated, not only in 
ordinary cases of repeating by rote, but still more 
strikingly in that extraordinary memory which some 
exhibit, and which is almost always of a mechanical 
character. For example, the scholarly Scottish poet, 
Leyden, could repeat verbatim anything, even a dry 
legal document, by reading it once. But he found this 
mechanical memory inconvenient; for, if he wished to 
recall any particular point, he had to start from the 
beginning and repeat the whole mentally till he came to 
the passage required.* So necessary and so effective is 
the expedient of reinstating the whole of the associated 
circumstances upon which suggestion depends. An 
additional illustration of this is afforded by the amusing, 



• Abercrombic's Intellectual Powers, p. 47. 



2 So Psychology. 

but significant fact, that instances are on record of a 
man doing an action when drunk, wholly unable to 
remember it when sober, but recollecting it at once on 
getting drunk again.* 

The above remarks indicate the general explanation of 
hypnotic phenomena, which seems to be demanded by 
the present state of our knowledge. At the same time it 
must not be concealed, that there are many particular 
details which are far from having received a complete 
psychological explanation; and, on its physiological side, 
the whole subject presents still a wide field of research 
for cerebral physiology. 

To the student unfamiliar with the facts, the general 
description of this section can scarcely convey any idea 
of their marvellous nature ; but it was impossible to 
illustrate the subject more fully without giving the whole 
treatment too much of a merely anecdotical character. 
A fuller narrative of the interesting facts connected with 
this region of mental life must be sought in the special 
literature which it has called forth. Some of this litera- 
ture has been occasionally cited above ; and it is con- 
stantly receiving accessions, either in the periodicals of 
the day, or in independent monographs. Dr. Carpenter 
gives considerable space to the subject in his Principles 
of Mental Physiology, with which may be compared his 
two lectures on Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc., historically 
and critically considered. Two papers by Mr. G. Stanley 
Hall in Mind (Number xxi., p. 98, and Number xxx., p. 
170), give some account of the most recent researches 
both in Europe and in America. Wundt's Physiologische 
Psychologic (Vol. ii., pp. 375-8) gives a sketch of foreign 



Ibid., p. 238. 



Illusory Cognitions. 281 

researches and literature. It may be added that the 
societies, recently instituted on both sides of the Atlantic 
for the promotion of psychical research, will probably at 
least succeed in collecting a body of facts connected 
with the abnormal activities of mind, free from those 
imaginative embellishments which, however pardonable 
in the art of the story-teller, are fatal to scientific inquiry. 
Some idea of the work already done by the English 
Society may be gained from the recent work, Phantasms 
of the Living, by Mr. Gurney, Mr. Myers, and Mr. Pod- 
more. With this may be compared four articles by Mr. 
Gurney in Mind (Numbers 33, 36, 46 and 47). 



282 Psychology. 



CHAPTER VI. 



GENERAL NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

THE explanation of our intellectual life would not 
be complete, if we did not attempt to generalise 
the detailed analyses through which we have gone. We 
have traced intelligence gradually evolving, out of associ- 
ate and comparable sensations, perceptions of individual 
objects, out of associable and comparable objects, classes 
of those that resemble. Then we have seen it evolving 
processes, by which it extends our knowledge from indi- 
viduals to classes, and from classes to individuals, with a 
consciousness of the reason for the extension. And 
lastly, we have followed it in its loftier movements, 
through the philosophic, the artistic, the moral, and the 
religious consciousness, seeking the interpretation of 
isolated particulars in the light of the universal order 
which they express, and stripping that order of its dead 
abstractness by finding it in the living particulars. 

To sum up, there is thus evolved to our consciousness 
a world of objects, placed over against ourselves, extending 
throughout an immeasurable space, and undergoing alter- 
ations during a limitless time — alterations which are pi> 
duced in the objects by each other in consequence of 
their recipi-ocal causality. There are, therefore, certain 
supreme categories, under which the intelligible world i 



General Nature of Knoivledge. 283 

thought, and which are indicated in the terms italicised 
in the preceding sentence. These being the universal 
categories of the intelligible world, their interpretation 
involves the interpretation of the general nature of know- 
ledge. Consequently, we find that the problem of the 
ultimate generalisations of psychology gathers round 
these categories and their implications. 

The discussion of this problem carries us into the 
most controverted field of our science. The controversy 
over this field has been perplexed by being mingled with 
a philosophical question which, though having an affinity 
with the psychological, still in strictness lies wholly be- 
yond its sphere. The philosopher inquires into the 
validity of the categories as facts in the real existence of 
the world. To the psychologist, on the other hand, they 
are simply facts of human consciousness, which call for 
scientific explanation as far as the processes of science 
can be of service for this purpose. Accordingly, these 
universal factors of intelligence are now to be examined 
in a purely psychological aspect. Even in this aspect 
the examination has furnished a subject of extensive 
controversy. Among the innumerable theories which 
the controversy has called forth, there are commonly 
distinguished two general tendencies of speculation. 
Without attempting to describe these tendencies in a 
single sentence, it may be said, by way of preliminary 
explanation, that one, starting from the assumption of a 
world of realities, such as is formed in our consciousness, 
explains all factors of intelligence as being alike products 
of these realities. The other theory, on the contrary, 
starts from self-conscious intelligence as the primary fact 
of all science, sees in the realities of the world no mean- 
ing except as constructions of intelligence, and therefore 
refuses to find in these realities the source of intelligence 



284 Psychology. 

itself. The former of these two tendencies is variously 
named, for reasons which will appear in the sequel, 
Realism, Empiricism, Sensationalism or Sensualism ; 
the latter is distinguished by such names as Idealism, 
Transcendentalism, Intuitionalism. Before proceeding 
to the discussion of these rival systems of thought, there 
are some terms of frequent occurrence in the controversy, 
with the exact use of which the student must be made 
familiar. 

1. The term Intuition, from which one of the above 
systems receives its name, expresses etymologically the 
act of looking upon (or into ?) anything. As we seem to 
gain an immediate knowledge of things by looking at 
them, intuition is very commonly applied, in general 
literature, to any cognition which is given in a sudden 
flash of consciousness without the intermediation of a 
lengthy process of reasoning. Now, if there are any 
knowledges involved in the very nature of knowledge it- 
self, they cannot be the product of any cognitive process; 
for without them the process would itself be impossible. 
For that reason they are called intuitions. 

2. Such knowledges are also said to be transcendental. 
They do not take co-ordinate rank with other factors of 
knowledge, which are merely adventitious. As condi- 
tions essential to the very possibility of knowledge, they 
may be said to transcend all its adventitious factors. 

3. A priori is another expression applied to such 
knowledges, especially since the time of Kant ; while all 
other constituents of our knowledge are named a 
posteriori.* A cognition a priori is, literally, one that 



* The Germans have even made these expressions into regular 
adjectives, as we might do by adopting the forms aprioric and 
aposterioric. 



General Nature of Knowledge. 285 

proceeds from what is prior, as an a posteriori cognition 
proceeds from what is posterior. It is on this account 
that arguments have been distinguished as a priori or a 
posteriori, when they proceed from cause to effect or from 
effect to cause ; for the cause is naturally prior. If I 
know an effect, — a fact or thing done, — from seeing it 
done, I know it from what comes last in regard to that 
thing, — from its ultimate accomplishment. My know- 
ledge is, therefore, a posteriori. On the other hand, if I 
know a fact before seeing it done, I know it from some 
source prior to the fact. My knowledge is, therefore, a 
priori. 

The former kind of knowledge is often spoken of as 
experience. Now, experience is literally trial. When we 
observe a fact as it actually happens, we may be said 
to have found it out by trial ; and, therefore, our know- 
ledge of it is appropriately described as experiential, or 
by the Greek equivalent empirical. 

Much of the knowledge, on which we act every 'day, 
is a priori in a certain sense. While I am writing, I 
have not yet tried the ink that is at the moment on my 
pen ; but I know a priori that it will leave a permanent 
mark on paper. Still, this knowledge, which, relatively 
to these drops of ink, is a priori, is not absolutely so. It 
is based on knowledge previously acquired by ex- 
perience, — by trying similar ink. As far as such cases 
are concerned, therefore, it remains a question, whether 
there is any knowledge that is absolutely a priori. 

4. Various other terms are applied to a priori 
cognitions, describing the same characteristic from 
different points of view. (a) They are called pure, 
because they are derived from the intrinsic nature of 
intelligence, without the admixture of anything extrane- 
ous, (b) They are, therefore, to be viewed, not as 



286 Psychology. 

exotics transplanted into the mind from some foreign 
source; they are rather native, innate (inborn), (c) On 
that account, they must also be conceived to be at the 
origin of all cognition, to be original. (</) As essential 
to the possibility of cognition, they are further spoken of 
as necessary ; and (e), being necessary to intelligence, 
they must be found in all minds, that is, they are 
universal. 

5. Such cognitions, being common to all men, are 
sometimes described as together constituting the Common 
Sense. This expression was brought into special promin- 
ence in the literature of British philosophy by the Scottish 
School; and the student will find a learned justification 
of the term, along with much interesting information 
about other terms of kindred meaning, by the greatest 
representative of the school, Sir William Hamilton, in 
his edition of Reid's H'orks, Note A, § 5. 

6. The distinction, drawn between Reason and 
Understanding, has some interest in the present connec- 
tion. Both terms are often employed for intelligence in 
general, or at least, as already mentioned,* for the 
higher process of intelligence, namely, comparison. 
But along with this general meaning, Understanding is 
often used, in a special sense, to designate intelligence 
considered merely as constructing cognitions of an 
empirical and particular nature, while Reason is, in 
contrast, applied to intelligence as furnishing, by its own 
nature, those a priori principles which form the supreme 
categories, the highest unifications of all knowledge. 
The further explanation of this distinction, with the 
modifications which it has received from different writers, 
would lead, however, into controversies of a philosophical 

* See above, Book i., Part ii. , Chapter ii. 



General Nature of Knowledge, 287 

nature. It need only be added that, whatever distinc- 
tions of this kind may be recognised, they must not be 
conceived as breaking up the essential unity of self- 
conscious intelligence ; for it is in virtue of this unity, 
that intelligence forms the supreme categories that give 
a structure to all experience. 

We may now proceed to the examination of these 
categories. 



§ 1. — Self- Consciousness. 

The previous chapters have described the evolution of 
our knowledge through its various stages. From this 
description it appeared that the very earliest step in 
forming the simplest perception is the consciousness of 
a sensation. This means that the sensation is no longer 
a purely subjective state, in which the sentient being is 
himself absorbed ; it must have become an object of 
knowledge, to be compared with others, — to be identified 
and discriminated. But this objectifying of a sensation 
implies that it is projected from me: in this act I become 
conscious of something which is not I ; and the con- 
sciousness of that which is not I is the consciousness at 
the same time of myself. Self consciousness, therefore, 
is involved in the very beginning of knowledge. 

Accordingly, self-consciousness is not so much an 
essential factor of intelligence, as rather intelligence 
itself. It cannot, therefore, be a product of processes of 
intelligence, themselves products of non-intelligent forces: 
for processes of intelligence without self-consciousness 
would be processes of intelligence without intelligence; 
and the forces, producing processes of intelligence, 
would, though non-intelligent themselves, be intelligible, 



288 Psychology, 

and an intelligible system of forces pre-snpposes an in- 
telligence, to which it is related. Still, Empiricists have 
endeavoured to explain self-conscious intelligence as 
merely one among the innumerable products of the 
universal forces, which intelligence itself construes into 
intelligible system. It is, therefore, necessary to consider 
this theory. Recent expositions will be found in Mill's 
Examination of I/am Man's Philosophy, Chap. XII. ; 
Bain's Emotions and Will, Note on Subject and Object 
at the end of the volume ; Spencer's Principles of 
Psychology, Part VII., Chapters 16-17. The following 
statement contains the salient points of the theory, the 
language of Mr. Mill being generally adhered to as 
closely as possible. 

We have no conception of mind itself; we neither 
know nor can imagine it, except as represented by the 
succession of feelings which are called states of mind. 
Nevertheless, our notion of mind is the notion of a 
permanent something, contrasted with the perpetual flux 
of mental states which we refer to it; but the something, 
which we thus figure as remaining the same while its 
states change, resolves itself into a permanent possibility 
of these states. This permanent possibility of feeling, 
which forms my notion of myself, is distinguished from 
those permanent possibilities of sensation, which form 
my notion of external objects. The latter are permanent 
possibilities of sensation only, while the former includes 
all kinds of feeling ; and, what is more important, the 
former is a possibility to me alone, the latter to other 
beings as well. The distinction has also, — at least so 
Dr. Bain insists, — a certain correspondence with the 
distinction between the ideal and the actual, between 
imagination and reality. 

To account for this notion of self it is postulated, 



General Nature of Knowledge. 289 

that the mind is capable of association and of expecta- 
tion. By these principles the actual feelings of the 
present become associated with the once actual feelings 
of the past and with possible feelings expected in the 
future ; and the aggregate thus formed is the something 
permanent amid changes of feeling, — the self which we 
figure as remaining the same while its manifestations 
vary. 

This theory suggests some obvious criticisms. 

I. Exception may surely be taken to the initial 
limitation of our knowledge of self. You may predicate 
what you like about stages of mental life prior to the 
origin of self knowledge, or of any other kind of know- 
ledge, whether in the human infant, or in organisms of 
ruder type. You may assert that at these stages mental 
life is merely a succession of feelings which never refer 
themselves to any self who feels them. But the limita- 
tion, to which exception is taken, has nothing to do with 
such a stage of mind : it expressly applies to a self- 
conscious activity ; and it asserts that, even when I do 
know myself, I know myself merely as a succession of 
feelings. So far am I from knowing myself always and 
only as 2 succession of feelings, that I never know nor 
can conceive myself as such. The assertion is, in fact, 
a contradiction in terms; it is tantamount to the assertion, 
that I know myself as that which is not I. 

There is, indeed, a sense in which the assertion might 
be interpreted as an awkward expression of a truth. A 
feeling, considered as a concrete fact, is but a mind or 
self in a certain state. It is true that by the ordinary 
process of abstraction we may give special attention to 
the state of feeling without thinking specially of the self 
who feels, just as we may withdraw our attention from 
the centre of a circle and confine it specially to the cir« 

T 



2 go Psychology. 

cumference. But as the latter abstraction is never sup- 
posed to imply that a circle can be known only by its 
circumference and without any centre, surely the abstrac- 
tion of feeling from the mind that feels cannot be under- 
stood to mean that the mind may be known only by its 
feelings without reference to itself. Whenever we 
descend from the dead abstractions of science to the 
living facts of our mental existence, it becomes obvious 
that feelings, thoughts, volitions are merely mind in its 
different activities and states. Accordingly, when it is 
asserted that we know the mind merely as a succession 
of feeling?;, the statement might be interpreted as imply- 
ing nothing more than that, when I know myself, I must 
know myself, not as an unreal abstraction, but as a living 
reality — not as a mere indeterminate something, but as a 
being who knows and feels and wills. 

This, however, is not what is meant by the limitation 
which the theory imposes on our knowledge of self. It 
assumes that we may know certain phenomena called 
feelings or mental states, but that we cannot know a 
being who feels, a mind that exists in these states. The 
truth is, that the whole description is based on the ap- 
plication to self-conscious intelligence of a wholly inap- 
plicable category — the category of substance and quality. 
The self-conscious intelligence constructs, by processes 
which we have analysed, a world of things or substances 
distinguished by determining qualities. But the form, in 
which the world is thus construed by intelligence, cannot 
be reflected on the construing intelligence, as if itself 
were merely one of its own constructions. 

Even the category, here applied, is misunderstood. 
It is used as if it implied that substance is an unknown 
and unknowable something, hid behind the impenetrable 
veil of its qualities. Without discussing here how far 



General Nature of Knowledge, 291 

this is a proper account of the category, it must be 
evident that, under such an interpretation, it has no ap- 
plicability to self-consciousness. We may, indeed, if we 
choose, speak of the self as a secret that is inexplicable. 
But it is a very open secret. There is nothing that we 
can apprehend more clearly than the meaning of " I " 
and " me," when they are used simply to express self- 
hood. All that can be understood by speaking of the 
self as inexplicable is, that in self consciousness we come 
upon a fact, beyond which science, knowledge, cannot 
go; for it is the fact of knowledge itself. 

The truth is, that the attempt to restrict self-knowledge 
to a series of changing feelings is abandoned as soon as 
it is made. For after declaring that we cannot know or 
conceive or imagine the mind except as represented by a 
succession of feelings, Mr. Mill adds in the immediately 
following sentence, that our notion of mind is the notion 
of a permanent something. It is this notion whose origin 
the theory seeks to explain. 

II. The explanation, however, will be found to involve 
throughout a begging of the question at issue. 

1. The postulates assumed and their application will 
make this evident. 

(a) The first of these postulates is association. Now, 
our analyses have shown that the effects of association are 
often marvellous ; but, after all, it can merely associate. 
It can link together this, that, and the other feeling. It 
can, after a while, make one suggest another rapidly and 
uniformly, even instantaneously and irresistibly. But no 
mere association can create what is not contained in any 
of the associated states. These remain this, that, and 
the other feeling to the end. Certainly no multiplicity 
of feelings can, simply by the fact of their being associ- 



292 Psychology, 

ated in a continuous succession, produce the unity of 
self-consciousness. 

(b) The other postulate, that the mind is capable of 
expectation, is still more obviously out of the question ; 
for expectation is inconceivable without self-conscious- 
ness. The language employed by Mr. Mill in the state- 
ment of this postulate conceals the inconceivability. The 
assertion that " the mind is capable of expectation," is 
intelligible only on the supposition that the expecting 
mind is already self-conscious, is able to imagine itself 
feeling in the future. Eut it should not be forgotten, 
that, on this theory, the expecting mind, not being yet 
developed into self-consciousness, is at any moment 
merely a feeling or a cluster of co-existent feelings. 
Consequently, the postulate, expressed with strict regard 
to the conditions of the theory, should have been to the 
effect that a feeling or a cluster of feelings is capable of 
expecting other feelings in the future. It may fairly be 
presumed that in this form the postulate would have 
placed itself beyond the necessity of criticism. 

2. The description of the mind as a permanent possi- 
bility of feeling is another point demanding consideration 
in this theory. The term possibility is, indeed, some- 
what vague ; but, in any sense, it can be taken only as 
an intensified abstraction of a term already sufficiently 
abstract, namely, power. Now, on any empirical theory, 
power, or (what is the same idea) cause, reduces itself, 
r i we shall see,* to an uniform antecedence. But 
evidently this idea has no application in the present 
case. The only cause, power, or possibility, from which 
a mental state proceeds, is, for the empiricist, the state 
or cluster of states forming its antecedent. Empiricism 

* See § 5 of this chapter. 



General Nature of Knoivledge. 293 

cannot even entertain the conception, that, in addition 
to these determining antecedents, the self enters into the 
temporal current of feelings as a constant factor in their 
causation. And yet, on any other interpretation, it is 
difficult to comprehend what is meant by speaking of the 
mind as a permanent possibility of feeling. 

The fact is, as already urged, that the categories, by 
which the self-conscious intelligence gives order to the 
succession of phenomena, are not the qualifications by 
which that intelligence is itself described. It is true 
that I, as an individual person, distinguish myself from 
other individuals by the particular current of feelings and 
thoughts which make up my mental life. But in the 
self-consciousness, which characterises that life, there is 
a principle implied, which cannot be conceived as itself 
a mere product in time of any temporal association of 
phenomena. It is but due to Mr. Mill to observe that 
he himself admits the intrinsic inconceivability of his 
theory. " The thread of consciousness," he says in 
closing the discussion, " which composes the mind's 
phenomenal life, consists not only of present sensations, 
but likewise, in part, of memories and expectations. 
Now what are these ? In themselves, they are present 
feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that 
respect not distinguished from sensations. They all, 
moreover, resemble some given sensations or feelings, of 
which we have previously had experience. But they are 
attended with the peculiarity that each of them involves 
a belief in more than its own present existence. A sen- 
sation involves only this : but a remembrance of sensa- 
tion, even if not referred to any particular date, involves 
the suggestion and belief that a sensation, of which it is 
a copy or representation, actually existed in the past : 
and an expectation involves the belief, more or less 



294 Psychology. 

positive, that a sensation or other feeling to which it 
directly refers will exist in the future. Nor can the 
phenomena involved in these two states of consciousness 
be adequately expressed without saying that the belief 
they include is, that I myself formerly had, or that I my- 
self, and no other, shall hereafter have, the sensations 
remembered or expected. The fact believed is, that the 
sensations did actually form, or will hereafter form, part 
of the selfsame scries of states, or thread of conscious- 
ness, of which the remembrance or expectation of those 
sensations is the part now present. If, therefore, we 
speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged 
to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings 
which is aware of itself as past and future : and we are 
reduced to the alternative of believing that the Mind, or 
Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or 
possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox, that 
something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, 

can be aware of itself as a series The true 

incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has 
ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a 
manner, present : that a series of feelings, the infinitely 
greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered 
up, as it were, into a single present conception, accom- 
panied by a belief of reality. I think by far the wisest 
thing we can do is to accept the inexplicable fact, with- 
out any theory of how it takes place." 

No one can fail to be impressed with the fairness of 
spirit, which characterises this exposition by Mr. Mill of 
the inconceivability attaching to his theory. The ex- 
position implicitly contains most of the criticism which 
this section has passed upon the theory \ for it admits 
that self-consciousness cannot be conceived as construct- 
ed by an association of successive sensations. The full 



General Nature of Knowledge. 295 

purport of this admission the sequel of this chapter will 
show. It will then appear that, with the admission, 
empiricism in psychology is virtually abandoned. 

The empirical theory of self-consciousness assumes, in 
the postulate of expectation, even if in no other respect, 
that the consciousness of time precedes the conscious- 
ness of self. We shall now consider the tenability of this 
assumption. 



§ 2. — Time. 

The consciousness of time is explained, on the 
empirical theory, as generated by the succession of 
conscious states. Probably the fullest exposition of the 
theory in recent times is that of Mr. Herbert Spencer.* 
His exposition may be summed up thus : — 

I. In the consciousness of successive states one part 
of the fact of which we are conscious is their succession. 
The state A appears in consciousness, not as the isolated 
state A, but as prior to its consequent B. Again, B 
appears as posterior to A, and prior to some third state, 
C ; and so on with the other factors of any conscious 
series. 

II. Now, suppose, as often happens in actual con- 
sciousness, two states separated, first by a brief interval, 
say a second ; afterwards by a longer interval, say a 
minute; and again by an interval longer still, such as an 
hour, a day, or a year. Here we have the same conscious 
states separated by different intervals. We are thus led 



* Principles of Psychology, Part vi., Chapter xv. See also Sully \ 
Outlines of Psychology, pp. 255—265. 



2g6 Psychology. 

to distinguish the intervals from the states they separate, 
— to form the abstract idea of succession, that is, of time. 
This abstraction may also be created, or, if already 
created, may be confirmed, by the fact, that different sets 
of conscious states may be separated by the same interval 
of time. Thus an odour and then a taste, a colour and 
then a sound, a sorrow and then a fit of anger, may 
follow one another, each at the interval of a second or 
an hour or a day or any other definite period. 

The theory, thus sketched, explains, if such an 
explanation were necessary, how, given the consciousness 
of our feelings being related in time, we may separate 
the idea of time from the feelings ; that is, it explains 
how, from the consciousness of feelings being successive, 
we may form the abstract idea of succession. But it 
does not begin to explain how we first become conscious 
of the concrete fact, that our feelings are not merely 
feelings, but are related as consecutive or as contem- 
poraneous. For the proposition, with which the theory 
starts, is either untrue or an assumption of the point at 
issue. The proposition is untrue, if it be taken to mean 
that the fact of succession is a part of the successive 
feelings, of which we are conscious. I am conscious of 
one feeling, then of another ; but in the one or the other 
there is nothing to tell that it comes before or after. Do 
I taste time, or smell it, or touch it with my fingertips, 
or see it in colours, or feel it when I am roused into 
anger or melted into tenderness ? 

But it may perhaps be urged that, though no feeling is 
itself a consciousness of time, yet the association and 
mutual suggestion of feelings form this consciousness. 
Need it be repeated that association can merely associate? 
It can give us a taste and an odour, a colour and a 
sound, etc. ; and, if prolonged, it may produce an 



General Nature of Knowledge. 297 

irresistible and instantaneous suggestion. But the fact 
of one sensation being suggested by another, however 
irresistibly and instantaneously, is not the consciousness 
of their being related as prior and posterior ; it is simply 
the consciousness of one sensation, then of another; it is 
not the consciousness of any relation whatever between 
them. 

But in a certain sense it is true, that the fact of their 
succession is a part of the whole fact of which we are 
conscious in a series of feelings. Only the proposition 
is not true in the sense which the theory requires. The 
consciousness of their succession is a wholly different act 
from the consciousness involved in the successive feelings 
themselves. It implies that consciousness is not restricted 
to feelings, but goes beyond them, and compares them 
with one another. Now, how is such a consciousness 
possible ? If our mental life be merely a succession of 
feelings, if the consciousness of each moment absolutely 
vanishes as that moment passes away, there can be 
no principle in consciousness to connect the different 
moments by a comparison which goes beyond each and 
cognises its relation of priority or posterity to others. For 
this there must be some permanent factor of conscious- 
ness, — a factor that is out of the succession which it 
observes. That factor is self-consciousness ; and without 
self-consciousness the consciousness of time is thus seen 
to be impossible. 

Thus also memory is explained. For memory is some- 
thing more than mere suggestion, with which it seems at 
times to be confounded in a purely empirical psychology. 
By memory is meant, not merely the representation of a 
former presentation, called up by the Laws of Association. 
It is a representation accompanied by the consciousness 
that it is a representation of what was formerly present. 



298 Psychology. 

Memory therefore implies a higher function of the mind 
than a bare association. It is the higher function of 
comparison applied to the suggestions of the past. As 
perception is an interpretation by thought of the presen- 
tations arising in consciousness from the excitement of 
the sensibility at the time, so memory may be described 
as an interpretation of the representations suggested to 
consciousness by associations formed before. It is a 
judgment with regard to the time — the temporal circum- 
stances — in which these representations were previously 
presented in consciousness. We can therefore under- 
stand why it is that, while suggestion is active in the 
earliest manifestations of mental life that we can trace, 
memory is a later development. Young children evi- 
dently often confound mere fictions of the fancy with 
valid reminiscences ; and the poor creatures are some- 
times ignorantly punished for lying, when their sole 
fault is a mistaken judgment with regard to a suggestion. 
Even in mature life most men must have had experience 
of the inconveniences arising from a slip of memory, 
which is no more unintelligible than an illusion of sense; 
and the scrupulous thinker will sometimes find himself 
in doubt as to whether his memory deceives him or not. 
When memory is thus fully described, it is seen to be 
impossible without self-consciousness. For if there were 
no permanent self, continuing identical amidst all the 
changes of consciousness, — if there were but a perpetually 
altering consciousness, in which each moment absolutely 
perishes as the next supervenes, — then there might per- 
haps be suggestion of one feeling by another, but there 
could be no memory. For memory is the consciousness 
that I, remembering in the present, am identical with my 
self of the past remembered. The inconceivability of 
memory on any empirical theory of mind is strikingly 



General Nature of Knowledge, 299 

expressed in the quotation from Mr. Mill near the close 
of last section. 

§ $.— Space. 

The empirical theory on the origin of this notion starts 
from the position, that all ideas of space may be 
interpreted in terms of muscular sensibility and time. It 
may, therefore, be observed in passing that, on this 
theory, the idea of space pre-supposes that of time ; so 
that it is possible to admit the empirical origin of the 
former, while denying that of the latter. To explain the 
fundamental position of the theory, it is to be observed 
that every notion of space may be described as referring 
to a possible series of muscular sensations in a given 
time. Is the particular notion that of magnitude ? then 
suppose, for example, I am thinking that the desk before 
me is larger than the book lying on it, my thought 
implies that a longer or quicker series of muscular 
sensations would be experienced in passing the hand 
over the surface of the one than in passing it over that 
of the other. Again, is the particular notion that of 
distance? then suppose, byway of illustration, I perceive 
this house to be nearer than yonder mountain, my 
perception means that a longer or quicker series of 
muscular sensations would be felt in reaching the one 
than in reaching the other. 

Starting from this interpretation of our notions of 
space, the empiricist proceeds to the fact that space 
implies more than a succession of sensations ; it implies a 
co-existence of positions. I conceive that the points, 
successively occupied by my hand or my body in 
traversing a space, do not vanish out of existence, but 
continue to exist when my hand or my body has left 



300 Psychology. 

them. How is this additional notion to be explained ? 
Partly by the fact, that we can feel simultaneous 
sensations of touch corresponding to the points succes- 
sively touched during the scries of muscular sensations 
experienced in traversing a tangible surface. Still more 
fully, however, is this notion of simultaneity developed 
'}y simultaneous sensations of sight, as these can compass 
i fir vaster extent of surface. In fact, Mr. Mill at least 
holds that, without the aid of sight, in other words, to 
the congenitally blind, ideas of space can never imply 
more than a mere succession of muscular feelings. But 
perhaps the idea of points successively touched being 
co-existent would be most unequivocally suggested to the 
mind by our ability to repeat the series of touches in any 
order. 

The different points, simultaneously discerned by 
touch and sight, or thought as co-existent by being 
touched in different orders, become thus the symbols of 
different stages in a series of muscular sensations by 
being associated with them. Finally, by abstraction 
these different points or positions may be dissociated in 
thought from the muscular sensations with which they 
were originally associated, and which they originally re- 
presented. We thus reach the abstract idea of co- 
existent positions, that is, of space. For space, as in- 
dicated especially by the German term Raum, is simply 
the room or sphere in which muscular exertion is 
possible.* 

The opponents of the older empiricism have usually 

* Expositions of this theory will be found, among other places, 
in Mill's Examination of Hamilton'' s Philosophy, Chapter xiii. ; 
Bain's Senses and Intellect, Part ii., Chapter i., §§ 33-45 ; Spencer's 
Principles of Psychology , Part vi., Chapter xiv., with which com- 
pare Chapter xxii. 



General Natu re of Knozvledge. 30 1 

contended that its genesis of this notion assumes im- 
plicitly the existence of the notion before the process of 
origination begins. The more recent empiricists, how- 
ever, ascribe the imperfection of the old empirical theory 
to the fact that it failed to recognise the function of the 
muscular sense in the development of this notion. But 
it is difficult to see how the introduction of this new 
factor into the development evades the old charge. For 
in educing the notion of space from muscular sensations, 
it must not be supposed that these are anything but sen- 
sations. They are, of course, distinguishable in con- 
sciousness from other sensations — from tastes, sounds, 
colours — as these are from one another. Different 
muscular sensations also are distinguishable from one 
another in intensity, in duration, and in other respects ; 
but still they are only sensations. 

Now, the problem is to explain how such sensations 
become objective relations — of distance, magnitude, 
situation — between things. In solving this problem we 
must not describe these sensations as if they were already 
such objective relations. But descriptions of this pur- 
port seem hardly avoidable. Some muscular sensations, 
for example, are spoken of, and with propriety, as " sen- 
sations of movement." Yet this language is apt to be 
used as implying that a muscular sensation is a conscious- 
ness of movement, and therefore of the space through 
which the moving body passes ; but this consciousness 
is not really involved in muscular sensations, or in any 
other sensations as such. Occasionally in the discussion 
of this subject phrases are employed with less justifica- 
tion, as when "consciousness of position," or "position " 
simply, is made to stand as an equivalent for any sensa 
tion of touch. 



302 Psychology. 

In such descriptions of sensations the whole question 
is apt to be begged. A sensation cannot take us beyond 
itself; and that is necessary in order to conceive a rela- 
tion of space or of any other sort. Here again, there- 
fore, empiricism falls into its general confusion between 
sensations, whether isolated or associated, and the act of 
self-conscious thought by which sensations are compared. 
But, in addition to this general confusion, the empirical 
theory on the notion of space falls into the special mis- 
take of confounding the sensations associated with a 
notion and the notion itself — the sensations of muscular 
exercise and the notion of space. It is quite true that we 
can interpret space in terms of muscular sensation and 
time ; for muscular sensations are associated with our 
notion of space : but they do not generate or constitute 
that notion. In the first chapter of this Part it was 
shown that solidity, distance, and other relations of space 
become associated with visual sensations, and therefore 
irresistibly suggested by them. In like manner they are 
associable with, and suggestible by, muscular sensations. 
But before we have obtained any notions of space at all, 
it would of course be meaningless to speak of them as 
being associated with muscular or visual or any other 
sensations. 

To say that the notion of space is merely the notion 
of a possible series of muscular sensations, is to beg the 
whole question. The feeling excited by the movement 
of a muscle is not the consciousness of a muscle moving. 
How do I know that muscular feeling implies masses of 
muscle which fill space, and a space in which these 
masses may move ? Not from sensations, either isolated 
or associated. For space is not feeling; it is not a sub- 
jective state, or an association of subjective states. It is 



General Nature of Knowledge. 303 

a relation of objects ; and, as a relation, it can be known 
only by comparison. 

Once obtained, the notion of space may become 
associated, and that inseparably, with sensations. With 
what sensations? It is hard to answer definitely, if we 
mean the sensations with which alone the notion asso- 
ciates. But it seems as if the organs of touch and sight, 
by the sub-division of their terminal fibres, were peculiarly 
adapted for suggesting that reciprocal outness, which 
constitutes spatial relation. 

Once a sensation is associated with locality, the 
inseparableness of the association, and the irresistibility 
of the consequent suggestion, are remarkable. The loss 
of an arm or leg might be expected to break the 
association, and to arrest the suggestion of these parts of 
the organism ; but when any irritation is set up in the 
trunk of a nerve which formerly extended to a lost limb, 
the irritation continues to be felt as if at the former 
termination of the nerve. What is still more astonishing, 
the same suggestion is observed even in cases of 
congenital imperfection. For instance, a girl of nineteen 
years, in whom all the metacarpal bones of the left hand 
were very short, and the bones of all the phalanges on 
that hand entirely awanting, used to experience sensations 
that seemed to be in the palm and fingers of a hand that 
never existed, as well as in the right hand which she 
had.* 

Some other problems with regard to spare and time 
will be more appropriately discussed at the close of next 
section. 



* Some notice of such cases will be found in M 'Cosh's Defend 
of Fundamental Truth, p. 164. Dr. M'Cosh quotes the Reper* 
ionium fur Analomie and Physiologic for 1S36, p. 330. 



304 Psychology. 

§ 4. — Substance. 

The cosmos, that is unfolded to self-conscious Intelli- 
gence, is a world of tilings, objects, substances. It is this 
aspect of the world of consciousness, that now demands 
consideration. 

The empirical theory on the notion of substance has 
not advanced since the time of Locke. A number of 
simple ideas, Locke explains, are found to occur together; 
in more modern language we should say, that a number 
of sensations are uniformly associated in our experience. 
On the ground of this association, we become accustomed 
to think of them as connected by some real bond, this 
habit being confirmed by the fact that such aggregates of 
simple ideas or sensations are commonly distinguished 
by a single name.* 

Here again the empiricist must be reminded that 
association simply assoeiates. One sensation may, by 
uniform association, be made to suggest others, even 
instantaneously and irresistibly ; but that is not the idea 
of substance. For in any number of sensations, how- 
ever long associated and however powerfully suggestive 
of each other, we have not yet got an objective world at 
all. This is apt to be concealed by the imperfection and 
ambiguity of Locke's language, in which "sensation" 
and "idea of a quality" are confounded. But sensations 
are the states of a subject, and contain in themselves no 
reference to an object. Tastes, touches, colours are 
merely tastes, touches, colours ; they are not the con- 
sciousness of a thing sapid, tangible, coloured. Whenever 
we describe them as qualities or ideas of qualities we 
assume the point at issue, — we take for granted the exis- 
tence of the notion of a substance to which they belong; 
for quality has no meaning apart from a thing qualified. 

* See Locke's Essay > Book ii., Chap. 23. 



General Nature of Knowledge, 305 

It is a striking proof of the impossibility of eliciting 
this idea from sensations, that Hume, on the empirical 
principles of Locke, denies not only the objective 
validity of the idea, but even its very existence, on the 
ground that there is no sensation,* from which it could 
be derived. The empiricists of the present day generally 
accept Hume's doctrine, but proceed in defiance of it by 
starting from an object outside of consciousness, — a sub- 
stance or force, — as the generator of consciousness itself. 

If we cannot trace the notion of substance to sensa- 
tions, its origin must be sought in some other factor of 
consciousness. To do this, let us observe the import of 
the notion. We are accustomed, as Locke puts it, to 
suppose that the qualities, represented by our simple 
ideas, are connected by some bond. Even Hume 
acknowledges, that " they are commonly referred to an 
unknown something, in which they are supposed to 
inhere ; or granting this fiction does not take place r are 
at least supposed to be closely and inseparably connected 
by the relations of contiguity and causation." That is 
to say, that the world, which unrolls itself before 
conscious intelligence, is conceived not as a series of 
vanishing sensations, but as a system of things which, 
with all their variableness, are endowed with a certain 
permanence. How comes it that the world shapes 
itself thus to intelligence? It arises from the fact, that 
otherwise there would be no intelligible world at all ; it 
is therefore the form of the world, that is implied in the 
very nature of intelligence. For to be intelligent is to 
be self-consc ous; and to be conscious of self is to be 
conscious of notself. Consequently, the very act of 

* Impression is Hume's name for sensation. See Hume's Trealist 
of Human Nature, Look i.. Part i., Section 6. 

U 



306 Psychology. 

intelligence, by which we are conscious of sensations, 
projects these into an objective sphere, transmuting 
them into qualities of objects, and thus forming out of 
them a world that is not ourselves. 

Accordingly, in their psychological aspect at least, 
qualities are simply the form in which self-conscious in- 
telligence construes sensations. By a similar construc- 
tion is formed the notion of substance as that unity by 
which qualities are essentially connected, and which re- 
mains unaltered amid their changes. For the variable 
elements— the qualities— of things in the world of con- 
sciousness can be conceived, even as variable, only by 
relation to that which is permanent. The very condi- 
tions, under which alone an intelligible universe can be 
conceived, render necessary the notion of substances as 
enduring while their qualities change. 

And here perhaps we find also the source of those two 
supreme forms under which the objective world is con- 
ceived—the world of objects co-existing in space, and 
undergoing successive modifications in time. For the 
world takes its intelligible form from its being posited, by 
intelligence that is conscious of self, as something that is 
not self. Now, 

i. The notself cannot be thought as an absolute 
identity. It is the opposite of the identical factor of 
consciousness ; it is a construction of factors which are 
necessarily thought as varying, i.e., as in time. 

2. Neither can the notself be thought as an absolute 
unity. Whatever relative unity may be ascribed to it, it 
must still, as opposed to the absolutely simple factor of 
consciousness, be thought as essentially manifold. That 
is merely another way of saying that it must be thought 
not as one indivisible whole, but as composed of distinct 
parts — of parts that are mutually exclusive. But the 



General Nature of Knowledge, 307 

relation of mutual externality between co-existent things 
is space. 

Space and time would thus appear to be forms in 
which the world must necessarily be conceived in order 
to be intelligible — in order to be an object to self-con- 
scious intelligence. This view of these forms takes 
away the ground from the puzzles which have been often 
built upon them since the time of the Eleatic Zeno. It 
has been often maintained, even in recent times, that 
human intelligence is the helpless victim of a mysterious 
antinomy or contradiction in applying the notions of 
space and time ; and from this alleged fact various meta- 
physical inferences have been drawn with regard to the 
intrinsic impotence and limitation of our intelligence. 
This is not the place to enter upon the metaphysical 
aspects of the problems involved in this doctrine, but in 
so far as the doctrine bears upon the notions of space 
and time as psychological phenomena, a few words of 
explanation are required. 

The doctrine in question asserts that it is impossible 
to conceive time and space as, on the one hand, uncon- 
ditionally infinite or unconditionally finite, as, on the 
other hand, infinitely divisible or absolutely indivisible. 
However far you may stretch the imagination into the 
regions of space, into the past or the future of time, you 
cannot touch in thought an absolute limit — a limit be 
yond which there can be conceived to be no space 01 
time. Repelled from the conception of such a limit, 
you endeavour to conceive space or time as absolutely 
unlimited ; but you find that thought sinks exhausted in 
the effort to compass this conception. Again, if time 
and space are broken up into parts, it is found impos- 
sible, on the one hand, to imagine a portion of either so 
small that it cannot be divided into portions smaller still, 



308 Psychology. 

on the other hand, to carry any portion of time or space 
to an infinite division in thought.* 

Notwithstanding the high authority under which these 
perplexities have been propounded, it does seem that 
they imply a misapprehension regarding the nature of 
the notions upon which they play. It is quite true that 
we cannot think an absolute limit to space or time, 
while we are equally unable to think of them as ab- 
solutely unlimited. But the reason of this is to be 
sought in no mysterious impotence, which restricts in a 
special manner the finite intellect of man. The impot- 
ence arises from the fundamental condition of all think- 
ing — the law which prevents thought from contradicting, 
and thereby removing, its own positions. For space and 
time are, as we have seen, forms of relation ; and to ask 
us to conceive them under those modes, which the 
doctrine in question pronounces inconceivable, would be 
to require the conception of a relative which is not re- 
lated to anything. 

Take, by way of illlustration, the idea of a space 
absolutely limited. Space is a relation of mutual out- 
ness ; the very idea of space implies that every space has 
something outside of it. But a space with an absolute 
limit would be a space, to which there is nothing outside, 
— a space that is not a space at all. So, time means a 
relation to a before and an after. An absolute limit to 
the past, therefore, would be a time with no before ; an 
absolute limit to the future, a time with no after. But 
either limit would be a time that is not a time. 

* See Kant's Kritik of Pure Reaso7i (Chapter on the Antinomy 
of Pure Reason); Sir William Hamilton's Discussions, pp. 13-15, 
601-9 ; Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. ii., pp. 367-374. Compare 
Mansel's Limits of Religious Thought, Lecture ii., and Spencer's 
First Princip/es, Part i., Chapter iv. 



General Nature of Knowledge. 309 

Take, again, the opposite extreme of the infinite. An 
infinite space or time, as the writers on the subject 
explain, is a conception that could be formed only by the 
infinite addition in thought of finite spaces and times; in 
other words, the conception implies an endless process. 
But when I am asked to form the conception now, I 
am asked to think a contradiction ; I am asked to end 
a process of thought which by hypothesis is endless. 

The same remark applies to the infinite division of 
space and time ; for like an infinite addition, an infinite 
division is a process which it would be a contradiction to 
speak of completing. On the other hand, space and 
time are, by their very nature as relations, conceived to 
be made up of related parts. The conception, therefore, 
of a space or time absolutely indivisible would involve an 
inherent contradiction. 



§ 5. — Cause. 

After the preceding analyses, especially that of last 
section, little remains to be said on the special problem 
which the notion of cause presents. There is evidently 
a close affinity between the notion of cause and that of 
substance : in some metaphysical analyses substance 
and cause are regarded as ultimately identical. As far 
as they form distinct notions, the one refers to a 
necessary or objective connection of co-existing pheno- 
mena, the other to a similar connection of phenomena 
that are consecutive, in the world of which we are 
conscious. Accordingly, as empiricism derives the 
notion of substance from the uniform association ot 
co-existing sensations, so it analyses the notion of cause 



310 Psychology, 

into an uniform association of sensations that form a 
sequence. 

This analysis is obviously chargeable with the general 
vice of all empiricism : it gives us a world merely of 
associated sensations, not of connected objects. A for- 
tuitous association of sensations, however frequently 
repeated, is not a necessary connection of objects; a 
temporal association in our consciousness is not an ob- 
jective connection between the things of which we are 
conscious. There need be no reluctance to admit, to 
the fullest extent, the marvellous effects of association, 
esj ecially when uniform and frequent We have seen 
that the two factors of an uniform sequence may, after a 
while, be able to suggest one another irresistibly and 
instantaneously. Still this implies merely that first the 
one appears in consciousness, and then the other im- 
mediately and inevitably arises. But the thought that 
the two are essentially connected, so that the one cannot 
appear without the other — this is a new thought, wholly 
different from either or both of the terms in the sequence. 

This thought, again, is the thought of a relation or 
connection, and cannot therefore be identified with sen- 
sation. It implies a consciousness which goes beyond 
transient sensations, and connects them with each other 
by a comparing act. This act is rendered possible by 
the presence in consciousness of a permanent factor that 
is not itself merely one of the phenomena which flow in 
unceasing variation. It is this factor by which, as we 
have seen, a plurality of co-existent qualities are con- 
nected into the unity of a substance. The same factor 
connects the successive movements in the world that rolls 
before consciousness. The changing modifications of 
substances, which constitute this succession, are thus 
thought as intrinsically connected in their temporal 



General Nature of Knowledge. 3 1 1 

relations — as coming necessarily before and after one 
another. But to say that one is necessarily prior, and 
another necessarily posterior is to say that the one is 
cause and the other effect 



312 Psychology. 



PART II. 



FEELINGS. 

Introduction, 

IN the remarks at the beginning of this Book it was 
explained that the various functions of mental 
life are evolved from the raw materials of sensation by 
the twofold process of association and comparison ; and 
the student may with advantage here refer to the 
explanatory remarks on this subject. The development 
of the first function, — that of cognition, — has been 
illustrated at length in Part I. It is the development of 
the second function, that we have now to trace. This 
function is variously termed feeling, emotion, sentiment. 
The term affection, as we shall afterwards find, has been 
commonly restricted to a single class of feelings, while 
passion is, in ordinary usage, applied to any feeling of 
unusual intensity. Of the three terms properly descrip- 
tive of these phenomena, emotion has the advantage of 
possessing the cognate adjectival form emotional: the 
adjective sentimental is not available for the same 
purpose, as it implies, in popular use, a preponderance 
of the emotional over the intellectual factor in our 
mental constitution. 

The various forms of feeling have their origin in the 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 3 1 3 

fact, that sensations are sources, not only of knowledge, 
but also of pleasure and pain. In the analysis, upon 
which we are entering, it will appear that the capacity of 
the different sensations for developing emotion, like their 
capacity for developing cognition, is to be measured by 
their associability and comparability. The most complex 
emotions, therefore, are those which draw their materials 
mainly from the more intellectual senses of hearing and 
sight. Those are also the emotions which are sometimes 
described as the most refined, inasmuch as in them the 
consciousness is freed from the dominion of mere sense, 
and exalted into a state in which purely mental activity 
becomes predominant over bodily sensation. 

We have seen that the aspect of sensations, in which 
they form the source of our emotional life, is that in 
which they are regarded as giving pleasure and pain. 
Consequently, this aspect of sensation demands our 
attention at the outset. Further, it may be observed 
that, though emotions are not connected with bodily 
organs in the same manner as sensations, yet there is an 
important connection, on the ground of which certain 
states or movements of bodily organs have come to be 
accepted as expressions of emotion. It will be advisable, 
therefore, before entering on the detailed analyses of this 
Part, to discuss the two general subjects thus indicated, 
namely, the nature of pleasure and pain, and the expres- 
sion of the emotions. 



§ 1. — The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 

In this inquiry it need scarcely be said that the 
question does not concern the intrinsic nature of 
pleasure and pain as facts of consciousness. To be 



3 H Psychology. 

known they must be felt ; and you can explain what 
they are in themselves only in the way in which any 
simple sensation — a taste, a colour, or a sound — may be 
explained, by referring to the fact in consciousness. 
The inquiry, therefore, is of the same nature with other 
inquiries which have been already instituted with regard 
to our sensations ; it concerns the conditions under 
which pleasure and pain arise in consciousness. Here, 
however, we are at once struck by a difference between 
our present inquiry and those which have been already 
carried out in reference to sensations. It was found that 
the quality, and even the intensity, of sensations are 
directly referable to conditions in their objective causes. 
On the other hand, the pleasantness or painfulness of a 
sensation is not in general obviously connected with a 
specific condition in the object, on which it depends. 
Accordingly, the conditions, which determine the plea- 
surable or painful character of any conscious state, are 
to be sought, not in the object with which it is associated, 
but rather in the subject itself. On this fact is founded 
the ethical doctrine, preached by Epicurean and Stoic 
alike, regarding the indifference of externals to the real 
happiness of human life. This fact is also expressed in 
the psychological doctrine, which describes feelings of 
pleasure and pain as purely subjective states. For 
while in knowledge and volition there is necessarily a 
reference to an object known or willed, in the mere 
feeling of being pleased or pained, the subject is occupied 
solely with his own conscious condition. 

What, then, is it that makes one state of consciousness 
pleasant, and another painful ? This question seems to 
have attracted scientific attention for the first time under 
the great impulse, given by Socrates and by his contem- 
porary adherents and opponents, to speculation on the 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 315 

chief good of human life. Probably the earliest theory 
on the subject was that of the Cyrenaics, one of the 
various schools into which the many-coloured followers 
of Socrates separated immediately after his death. The 
theory, in its germ at least, may perhaps be traced to the 
Master ; for it apparently received the sanction of his 
greatest disciple in the Platonic dialogue, Philebus. But 
a theory, taking a far larger grasp of the phenomena, was 
soon after elaborated by Aristotle ; and it is marvellous 
to what an extent subsequent speculation on the subject 
has been influenced by Aristotelian thought. Sir William 
Hamilton has done more than any other British 
psychologist to draw attention to the subject, and his 
own theory professes to be little more than a reproduc- 
tion of the Aristotelian. But the most recent discussions 
on the subject, even among the expositors of the 
psychology of evolutionism, follow the essential line of 
the same theory, happily enriching it with a new wealth 
of illustration from the vast range of modern biological 
science.* 

Stript of the technical and even scholastic language 
in which it has sometimes been unnecessarily dressed, 



* The completest exposition of Aristotle's own theory is in the 
Nicomachean Ethics, Look x. Sir W. Hamilton devotes to the 
subject the last six of his Lectures on Metaphysics (Compare my 
Outline of Sir IV. Hamilton's Philosophy, pp. 195-222). Mill's 
Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy contains a chapter (the 
twenty-fifth) of hostile criticism on the theory. In Dallas' The Gay 
Science (Chapters 10-13) will be found an exposition of the theory 
with charming originality of illustration, and a chivalrous cham- 
pionship of Hamilton against Mill's attack. Among recent 
discussions by evolutionists, the chief work to be consulted is, of 
course, Spencer's Principles of Psychology, Part ii., Chapter i\ , 
with which compare his Data of Ethics, Chapter x. ; but a 



316 Psychology. 

the theory may be summarised in the following brief 
statement : — 

All our conscious states — our activities and passivities 
equally — are capable of various degrees both of intensity 
and of duration. Still they are limited and that in two 
ways. There is firstly, an absolute or ultimate limit to 
the intensity and duration of any state, — a limit which 
cannot by any exertion be overstepped. There is, 
besides, a natural or ordinary limit, that is, a limit 
which the mental state tends spontaneously to reach, 
but which may be exceeded by an extraordinary exertion. 
This limit may be defined in various ways. It is here 
spoken of as natural, because it is the limit to which a 
mental state tends by its very nature. As affording a 
norm or rule for moderating the ordinary stimulation of 
a mental state, it may be called the normal limit. It is 
also the limit of health : if it is not usually reached, the 
organ or power called into play becomes atrophied; if it 
is usually transgressed, hypertrophy and destructive 
waste ensue. Pleasure, then, may be defined as the 
consciousness arising from the stimulation of a mental 
state to its normal limit, and no further ; pain, as the 
consciousness arising from a mental state being strained 
beyond, or restrained within, that limit. 

According to this law, therefore, those actions give 
pleasure which fulfil the conditions of healthy life, those, 
on the contrary, give pain, in which these conditions are 
violated. Accordingly, it has been pointed out by 
recent evolutionists that this is precisely the course 



prominent place must be accorded to Mr. Grant Allen's Physio- 
logical Alsthetics, especially Chapter ii. A history of theories is 
given by Hamilton, and also by Wundt [Physiologische Psychologie, 
Vol. i., pp. 494-9)- 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 317 

which the development of life would take through a 
struggle for existence in which the fittest survive, as it 
has been held from of old that the arrangement is 
a beneficent provision which the wise Author of Nature 
has made for the preservation of the individual and the 
continuance of the species.* 

But the abstract statement of this theory of pleasure 
and pain calls for some explanatory remarks in order to 
understand its interpretation of our emotional life. It 
may, therefore, be considered proper at the outset to 
notice an objection which appears in Mr. Mill's criticism 
of the theory. The objection is urged in an observation 
made by Sir W. Hamilton himself. "When," he says, 
" it is required of us to explain particularly and in detail, 
why the rose, for example, produces this sensation of 
smell, assafcetida that other, and so forth, and in what 
peculiar action does the perfect or pleasurable, and the 
imperfect or painful, activity of an organ consist, we 
must at once profess our ignorance." Mr. Mill cites 
this confession as implying that Hamilton was himself 
" more than half aware " of his theory being unable to 
fit all the facts. But, in spite of Mill's demand, 
Hamilton's assertion holds good with regard to all 
theories, that " in general we may account for much ; in 
detail we can rarely account for anything." There is not 
an animal or plant, not a star in space or a pebble on 
the seashore, whose position and shape and properties 
we are able to explain in complete detail. The utmost 
we can do is tc show how, if we were acquainted with 



* It may be interesting to compare with Spencer's Data of 
Ethics Ferguson's Principles of Motal and Political Science, 
Part ii., Chapter i., § 6. 



3 1 8 Psychology. 

the history of each individual object, every detail in 
reference to it might admit of being explained; but to 
show how each detail has actually been brought about, 
is beyond the power of the most industrious intellect. 

This inability, however, does not militate against our ex- 
tending to unknown facts a theory which furnishes a 
simple explanation of all the known facts of the same 
class. From the accidental limitations of human 
knowledge, we may be unable to explain how certain 
facts have been, in all their minutest details, the result of 
a certain law : our ignorance does not imply that we 
know the facts to be incompatible with the law. Now, 
it is true that, in many cases, we cannot tell how the 
pleasantness or unpleasantness of a particular mental 
state has actually been produced. It is sufficient to be 
able to show how, if we were fully acquainted with the 
process at work in such mental states, their pleasant or 
painful nature would be seen to flow from the general 
law of pleasure and pain. 

But this is precisely what we are able to do in 
reference even to our simple sensations. Take, by way 
of example, an unpleasantly sour taste. We know the 
destructive action of powerful acids on all animal tissues 
even of the toughest sort. Is it an illegitimate supposi- 
tion that milder acids, like those of unripe fruit, which 
do not actually disintegrate the gustative organs, but 
merely produce an unpleasant taste, set up a violent 
activity in these organs, and that this excessive strain is 
the cause of the painful sensation ? For we know that 
an activity of the same kind, but more moderate in 
degree, such as is excited by the delicate acids of many 
common fruits, when ripe, is capable of affording one of 
the most pleasant tastes. On the other hand, it is worth 
observing that, if an acid of this sort is extremely diluted, 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 319 

It is apt to excite that unsatisfactory feeling which appears 
due to an imperfect stimulation; and in such circum- 
stances the sapid body is appropriately spoken of as 
insipid or tasteless. But it is evident that the full 
explanation of such phenomena must wait upon the pro- 
gress of physiology in disclosing the nature of the 
organic processes concerned in our various sensations. 

But whatever judgment may be passed on Mr. Mill's 
criticism, there are evidently not a few facts connected 
with our emotional life, which receive an interesting 
interpretation in the light of this theory. Among these 
prominence may be given to a fact which has often been 
noticed, that, on the one hand, feelings which seem 
intrinsically painful sometimes give pleasure, while, on 
the other hand, feelings which seem intrinsically pleasant 
sometimes give pain. To explain, it may be observed 
that some feelings appear to depend for their pleasurable 
or painful character on their intrinsic qualities. This is 
the case, as Wundt points out,* especially with those 
sensations, in which, as in tastes, odours, and the feelings 
of organic life, the consciousness is mainly taken up 
with the pleasure or pain received. Thus in distin- 
guishing tastes of a sweet quality from those of a bitter 
quality, we commonly attach an intrinsic agreeableness 
to the former, an intrinsic disagreeableness to the 
latter. So, as already observed, smells are in general 
distinguished only by their agreeable and disagreeable 
qualities. In like manner, certain emotions, such as love 
and hope, seem to be intrinsically delightful, while 
others, like fear and hate, seem intrinsically painful. 
Now, if it were really the natural quality of a feeling 



Physiologische Psychologies Vol. i., pp. 470-1 (2nd ed.). 



320 Psychology. 

which yielded its pleasure or its pain, it would involve 
an irreconcilable contradiction to speak of a painful 
feeling giving pleasure, or a pleasant feeling giving pain. 

But the truth is indicated by our theory : it is not the 
essential quality of any conscious state that makes it 
agreeable or disagreeable, but its accordance or dis- 
cordance with the limit of healthy exercise. This will 
appear from both sides of the fact under consideration. 

I. The transition of generally painful feelings into an 
agreeable state is experienced where it might be least 
expected, — in sensation, where it might be supposed 
that, as there is a physical basis for the pain, there must 
be a physical barrier against its yielding to an opposite 
feeling. Yet we know that beverages and viands, 
disagreeable at first, come to be indulged in with even a 
greedy relish. Habits, like smoking, snuffing, chewing 
tobacco, are sometimes practised by the beginner with 
positive disgust, but become after a while the sources of 
a fascinating pleasure. It seems as if in these and 
kindred sensations the limit of healthy, and therefore of 
agreeable, stimulation were very near the limit where 
consciousness begins ; and, consequently, even a faint 
stimulation is apt to overstep the limit of pleasure. But 
a persistent exercise of the organ, on which the stimulant 
acts, seems to produce such a modification of its struc- 
ture, to impart such a strength or toughness to its 
tissues, as enables it to stand a degree of excitement 
which would previously have been unendurable. This 
is confirmed by the familiar fact, that the longer such a 
habit is indulged, and the more excessive the indulgence, 
the greater is the quantity of stimulus required to yield 
the gratification craved, — 

" As if increase of appetite had grown 
By what it fed on." 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain, 321 

It is but an extension of this explanation to suppose, 
that emotions, like grief and fear, which are apparently 
painful in their very nature, are so in reality only because 
they scarcely admit of any indulgence without transgres- 
sing the limits of healthy action. Feelings of the 
irascible type, for example, in all their ordinary out- 
bursts, imply too violent a disturbance of our sensitive 
nature to be capable of yielding any pure enjoyment; 
and yet the proverbial sweetness of revenge is a proof 
that these passions do form the source of a strong 
gratification. Moreover, prolonged or excessive indul- 
gence produces here the same effect as in the case of the 
unpleasant sensations which are converted into pleasure; 
the man, who continues to find delight in the indulgence 
of malicious feelings, may be hardened into a coarse 
insensibility to human sympathies, that will lead him to 
seek his hideous gratification in strong stimulants of 
envy and spite and cruel revenge, from which ordinary 
minds shrink with horror. 

But we need not dwell further on the malevolent side 
of human nature, as it will require to be considered 
fully in the sequel, when the source of its gratifications 
may be more appropriately examined. In the instances 
which have just been described, feelings that are usually 
painful are made to give pleasure by raising the normal 
limit of healthy excitement, and thus enabling the mind 
to bear a more powerful stimulant. But there are 
instances in which the same result is reached in another 
way, — by lowering the intensity of the stimulation. An 
example of these is furnished by one of the main 
branches of literature. Tragedy plays upon the pain- 
ful emotions of the human soul. These emotions, 
when aroused by causes in the world of reality, com- 
monly imply an excitement too serious for any sort 

w 



322 Psychology. 

of pleasure. They may, indeed, as we have seen, afford 
a gratification to coarse natures that crave strong 
emotional stimulants, or to morbid sensibilities that feed 
on excitement. But to most minds that seek recreation 
in literature the tragedy of real life is too shocking. An 
ideal representation of life's tragedies, however, excites 
the appropriate sentiments in such a moderate degree 
as involves no unwholesome strain upon our sensibility, 
and fulfils thereby the condition of pleasurable indulgence. 
These remarks are not, of course, intended to be 
understood as discovering the source of all the en'oyment 
that is derived from tragic literature. It is obvious, for 
example, that part of this enjoyment must be due to the 
aesthetic gratification afforded by literary art. But 
greater than all the mere delight in artistic workmanship 
is the pleasurable excitement which is felt in the 
emotions themselves that are aroused by the ideal 
pictures of tragedy ; and it is a significant fact that 
philosophical critics, without any design of establishing 
a psychological theory, have yet sometimes analysed the 
pleasure felt in tragedy as if they were expressly illustrat- 
ing the theory of pleasure and pain, which is now under 
consideration.* A further result of this theory is the rule 
of poetic art which demands that a tragedy shall not be 
excessive, or at least without relief; and it becomes a 
fair question of criticism, whether some great poems, 
such as even King Lear and Othello, do not transgress 
the limits which are required for poetic effect. 

The emotions, which, since the time of Aristotle, 
have been regarded as pre-eminently the materials of 



* See Hume's well-known essay On Tragedy (Essays, Part i., 
22.). The quotation from Fontenelle is especially interesting. 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 323 

tragedy, are pity and terror, or, as they might perhaps be 
more accurately described, sympathy with grief and 
sympathy with fear.* Yet grief and fear are, of all 
emotions, precisely those which force us, amid the 
realities of life, to face suffering without disguise. There 
is nothing, however, better established in experience 
than the fact, that these very emotions are capable of 
being transformed into pleasurable excitements. 

1. Take, for example, fear. Even when it is not 
without ground in real danger, it is yet capable of being 
toned down so as to yield a genuine, though strong 
enjoyment, to men at least of robust nerve. It has often 
been observed that not a few sports owe their joyous 
stimulation in no slight measure to the excitement of the 
genuine peril which they involve. The ascent in a 
balloon, the shooting of a rapid in a canoe, the hunt of 
the tiger and other beasts of prey, perhaps even the glory 
of a battle-charge, 

" And that stern joy which warriors feel 
In foemen worthy of their steel," 

are instances in which even a well-grounded fear does 
not surpass the limit of pleasure when the sensibility has 
the toughness of vigorous health. But the purest 
pleasure of this stimulant is felt when it is drawn from 
imaginary sources ; and it is not merely the drama, but 
other forms of literature as well, that take advantage of 
its power. Here, therefore, is disclosed the secret of the 
spell which poet or story-teller may weave from tales of 



* See some capital remarks on this point in Dallas' The Gay 
Science, Vol. ii., pp. 53-59. 



324 Psychology. 

horror, and from all the weird imagery that clothes the 
mysterious agents of an antique superstition. 

2. A similar fact is noticeable in the case of the other 
tragic emotion. It has often been observed that, after 
the first shock of a bereavement is over, the heart seems 
to become accustomed to the natural feeling of sorrow, 
yearns even after the indulgence, and finds a solace in 
the sad exercise. Sir William Hamilton has cited 
numerous references to this strange experience of 
sorrowing minds ;* but he has apparently overlooked the 
most exquisite expression that it has ever found, when 
Queen Constance, justifying herself against Philip's 
complaint that she had become "as fond of grief as of 
her child," pleads : — 

" Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
Then have I reason to be fond of grief, "t 

If, even in the real calamities of life, the heart may thus 
find pleasure in dallying with its own woe, it is not 
surprising that literature should seize upon a fact so 
favourable to its effects. Not only, therefore, does the 
agreeable stimulation of grief form one of the principal 
charms of tragic representation in the drama, as well as 
in the narratives of history and fiction ; but in all poetry 
still the favourite theme is II Pensercso, — 

The sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 



* Lectures on Metaphysics, Vol. ii., pp. 482-3. 
t King John, Act iii., Scene 4, 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 325 

It need scarcely be added that, while for convenience 
illustrations have been drawn from literature, the same 
principle must explain the charm of pathos in all the 
arts. 

II. But the counterpart of the fact we have been 
considering affords an equally remarkable illustration of 
the law, on which pleasure and pain depend. Feelings, 
that seem in their essential nature pleasant, may be 
rendered painful by repression or by excess. This, too, 
is experienced, even in the case of sensations, where it 
might be supposed that there is a physical necessity for 
the pleasure. The experience is extremely familiar in 
connexion with the manifold forms of physical enjoy- 
ment, which the strong and healthy find in muscular 
exercise : the moment the limit of health is passed, the 
moment an injurious waste sets in, that moment a 
warning is sounded in consciousness by the pleasure of 
exertion giving place to the pain of fatigue. BuJ the 
same result is observed also in the indulgence of the 
passive sensations. Every child soon learns, by some 
uncomfortable experience, 

" To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof little 
More than a little is by much too much."* 

There is a point, also, which the most delicious fragrance 
may not exceed ; a slight increase in its intensity may 
transform it into a nuisance. But here it is surely 
unnecessary to enter into details \ all that has ever been 
written on the disagreeableness of surfeits might be cited 
in illustration of the same truth. 

In sensations, like those mentioned, which seem 



* Shakespeare's King Henry IV., Part i. , Act iii., Scene 3. 



326 Psychology. 

intrinsically pleasant, it must be supposed that the limit 
of healthy activity for the sentient organ is considerably 
above the verge of consciousness, and that therefore the 
sensation in all ordinary degrees is a source of pleasure. 
But it is evident that the pleasure arises from no inherent 
quality of the sensation: it arises from the healthy 
moderation of the exercise which it involves, and is 
therefore neutralised by excess. 

Familiar facts oblige us to extend the same law to our 
emotions. The experience of men under all conditions 
has been, that no cup of joy can ever be safely drained 
to the very dregs. Every attempt to charge our pleasures 
with an undue intensity, or to prolong them for an undue 
length of time, is inevitably frustrated by the irreversible 
laws of our nature. And, therefore, even when life thrills 
with a moment of ecstatic joy, there often shoots through 
consciousness a pang from feeling that the intensity of 
bliss cannot be sustained, that we are trembling on the 
verge, where a breath may decide whether pleasure or 
pain is to prevail. This fact has, indeed, opened an in- 
exhaustible theme for the moralist in all ages, founding, 
as it does, on an unassailable basis the injunction to 
moderation in all our enjoyments. In an often-quoted 
passage from Romeo and Juliet this moral precept is 
actually based on the psychological law with which it is 
here connected ; and the law is itself illustrated by 
reference to the very phenomena already noticed of 
pleasant sensations becoming in excess disagreeable. 



" These violent delights have violent ends, 
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, 
Which as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey 
Is loathesome in its own deliciousness, 
And in the taste confounds the appetite 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 327 

Therefore love moderately ; long love doth so : 
Too swift arrives as tardy as to slow. " * 

Beside the double fact, now illustrated, of pains 
becoming pleasant, and pleasures painful, there is 
another feature of our emotional life, which also 
receives explanation from the law of pleasure and pain. 
The law leads us to expect that pain may be produced 
by opposite causes, — by defective exercise as well as by 
excess. This expectation seems in many cases to be 
realised. In illustrating the statement that a taste of 
sour quality is not intrinsically disagreeable, it was 
pointed out that, when of moderate strength, as in the 
delicate acids of many fruits, sourness is rather agreeable, 
and that it becomes disagreeable either by excess, as in 
the strong acids of unripe fruits, or by defect, as in an 
insipid dilution. The same observation may be made 
in reference to sweet tastes, only that the limit of agree- 
able intensity is higher than in the taste of acids. The 
contrast between pains of excess and those of defect is 
not so obtrusive in other sensations ; yet here and there 
it may be traced. Thus, an aromatic substance like the 
odoriferous fruits, may, in course of putrefaction, become 
so strongly scented as to be offensive, while it excites a 
milder dissatisfaction also when its aroma is gone. In 
colour-decorations an excessive display of the powerfully 
stimulating tints at the red end of the spectrum may 



* Act ii., Scene i. Compare the apposite passage in Goldsmith's 
DeserUS Village : — 

" In these, ere trifiers half their wish obtain, 
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ; 
And, e'en when fashion's brightest arts decoy, 
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy ? " 



328 Psychology. 

derive its disagreeableness, partly if not wholly, from the 
surfeit of the eye, while a superabundance of the milder 
greens and blues, and, still more, of neutral tints, may 
owe its unpleasant effect to the disappointment arising 
from imperfect stimulation. Most of these forms of 
unsatisfying sensations are without names, probably from 
the fact that they are not sufficiently obtrusive in human 
life to require specific mention often; but it is one of the 
earliest lessons of all science to learn that the variety of 
nature is not to be restricted by the imperfections of 
human language. Here, fortunately, the want of specific 
names is compensated by a common artifice of language. 
The most familiar instance of unpleasantness arising from 
defective sensation is met with among our tastes ; and, 
as in numberless other cases, the typical representative 
of a class is used to provide a name for all the rest. Salt 
that has lost its savour, viands in which the customary 
seasoning is missed, the extreme dilution of any flavour, — 
these have long been taken as types of everything that 
fails to impart an adequate zest to our enjoyments. In- 
sipidity has, therefore, become a term of extensive 
application to feelings of an unsatisfying nature.* 

These feelings are met with throughout the entire 
range of our emotional life ; but probably they are to be 
found in their most striking form in connection with the 
general exercise of our powers. The happiness of life as 
a whole must depend on our having sufficient occupation 
to afford an agreeable stimulation of feeling. It is true 



* Various other terms, though not more specific than insipid, are 
also employed to denote the same idea of the unsatisfactoriness of 
deficient stimulation of the feelings, such as, dull, slozu, fiat, stale, 
vapid, spiritless, lifeless, dead, dead-alive. The emotional state 
must therefore be familiar enough in ordinary life. 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 329 

that the necessities of life compel most men to work 
beyond the limit of health and pleasure : the minute sub- 
division of labour in modern times, moreover, aggravates 
this evil by withholding the relief of variety in occupation, 
demanding, as it generally does, the special exercise of 
one power or one set of powers to excess. It is, there- 
fore, the irksomeness of excessive toil that is most 
frequently forced on our attention, as indeed it is the 
pains of excess that are in general the more obtrusive. 
Still, the irksomeness, arising from an unsatisfactory 
amount of activity, is not the less a fact. 

** Absence of occupation is not rest, 
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."* 

This is the unpleasantness that we name tedium, ennui. 
The Germans name it well Langeweile ; for in this state 
all time seems a lo?ig while, it passes so slowly. Accprd- 
ingly, it is to escape from this condition that men 
invent the various devices appropriately called pastimes ; 
and when time, by its dreariness, appears like a foe to 
be got rid of, men are not unwilling to " kill time " by 
engaging even in laborious sports or feverish excitements 
like gambling. 

Perhaps in the light of these facts we may find an ex- 
planation of the sad phenomena of satiety. Variation of 
stimulus is essential to consciousness; but even a change 
perpetually rung on the old set of objects begins after a 
while to be followed by more languid feelings. Novelty 
is, therefore, essential to enjoyment, as well as variety, 
both being necessary to stimulate feeling to the lowest 



Cowjper's Retirement* 



33° Psychology. 

limit of pleasure. But most lives are restricted within a 
comparatively narrow sphere ; and, whatever variety they 
may enjoy, cannot long continue to find scope for 
novelty of impression. Accordingly, if the mind has oppor- 
tunities of reflection, there is apt to arise, in varying de- 
grees of intensity, a feeling of dissatisfaction with circum- 
stances as unable to afford adequate stimulation in con- 
sequence of having lost their freshness. This feeling may 
attach itself merely to single objects which, from long fa- 
miliarity, have lost their power to please. But it may 
also extend to the whole surroundings; and if no bene- 
ficent necessity prevents the sensibility from morbidly 
preying on itself, the result may be a state of intolerable 
discontent with the general insipidity of life. 

41 How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seem to me all the uses of this world 1 " * 

In this state of feeling may we not see the source of 
those pessimistic systems of thought, which find in hu- 
man life nothing worth living for ? This incapability of 



* Hamlet, Act I, Sc. 2. The citation of Hamlet suggests that 
the student will find an invaluable subject of psychological specula- 
tion in the mood of mind which has been immortalised in this drama. 
The same life-weariness, with its developments inhuman character, 
has formed a favourite theme with the poets of the modern world ; 
and the student may derive an interest from comparing in this con- 
nection other celebrated treatments of the same theme, such as 
Byron's Manfred and Tennyson's Maud, but especially Goethe's 
Faust, and perhaps also the less successful reproductions of the 
Faust-legend by Marlowe, Miiller, Lenau, and Bailey. There are 
borne admirable remarks on this mood of the soul, with a general 
reference to its manifestations in life and literature, but with special 
reference to his Sorrows of Werther, in Goethe's Wahrheit unci 
Dichtung, Book xiii. 



The Nature of Pleasure and Pain. 331 

receiving pleasure from the feeble excitement of objects 
that are no longer new may explain also the fact, often 
referred to by the poets, that to young eyes there is 
thrown over nature a glamour which vanishes with ad- 
vancing years. 

" There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more."* 

It only remains to add that another influence must be 
taken into consideration in order to comprehend ade- 
quately the phenomena of our pleasures and pains. Our 
feelings depend for their pleasantness or painfulness, not 
solely upon themselves, but also upon the relation in 
which they stand to one another. There are two results 
which follow from this. 

1. A feeling, which, if allowed free play, might burst 
into vigorous activity or even absorb our consciousness 
for the time, may be held in check or, perhaps, wholly 
submerged by another feeling of an opposite nature, with 
which it happens to be associated. This is strikingly 
illustrated by the fact that the same object may, by its 
different aspects, awaken extremely different feelings. 
Take, for example, an exhibition of vice like drunken- 
ness. By his droll behaviour the drunkard is adapted 
to excite irrepressible mirth as naturally as, by his deg- 

* Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immorialily from the 
Recollections of Childhood. 



332 Psychology. 

radation of humanity, a feeling of pitiful sorrow or of 
pitiless scorn. Take, again, aesthetic feeling or taste. 
Its vagaries have long been a subject of common remark. 
Nor is this hard to explain, for such feeling is often 
modified or entirely neutralised by other feelings that are 
out of harmony with it, such as physical pain, mental 
suffering, anger, or envy. Nearly all the objects that 
excite feeling are capable of being viewed in a variety of 
aspects ; and consequently our emotional life is, in most 
instances, of a complex nature, while in many instances 
it exhibits a strange union of discordant passions. In 
such combinations it depends on numerous causes, which 
of the contending emotions is to prevail ; but it will be 
found, in subsequent analyses, that the prevailing 
emotion is often misinterpreted from failure to appreciate 
the influence of the others with which it may have been 
associated. 

2. Another important fact results from the relation of 
different feelings. A feeling may owe its pleasantness or 
painfulness, either wholly or partially to its contrast with 
the immediately preceding state of mind. Thus a men- 
tal state, which is neutral in regard to pleasure and pain, 
may be rendered pleasant by being a relief from previous 
suffering, while it may be rendered painful by the mere 
want of some previous luxury. By the same cause also, 
our pleasures and pains may be intensified ; and it is 
this fact, that gives to sudden calamities an additional 
bitterness, as well as an additional ze:t to unexpected 
good news. In the vicissitudes of life this character- 
istic of our pleasures and pains finds fresh illustration 
every day ; and therefore the pleasures of vicissitude 
have afforded to Gray a natural theme for one of his 
finest odes. 



Expression of the Feelings. 333 

*' See the wretch, that long has tost 

On the thorny bed of pain, 
At length repair his vigour lost 

And breathe and walk again : 
The meanest floweret of the vale, 
The simplest note that swells the gale, 
The common sun, the air, the skies, 
To him are opening paradise." 

These facts have been embodied in technical language 
by the psychologists. In so far as our feelings owe 
their agreeable and disagreeable characters to themselves, 
they are said to be positive or absolute pleasures and 
pains. On the other hand, the terms negative and 
relative are used, when pleasure and pain are due to 
comparison with some previous feeling. 



§ 2. — The Expression of Feelings. 

Our pleasures and pains have come to be associated 
with certain bodily actions, so that these can be 
interpreted by other persons as signs of our sensitive 
condition at the time. For accuracy three classes of 
such signs may be distinguished. (1.) There is the 
ordinary form of intelligent expression for feeling as well 
as thought in articulate language. This, however, is a 
mode, not of emotional expression in particular, but of 
mental expression in general, and, consequently, it 
presents no claim for special discussion here. (2.) 
There are many actions which are at first voluntarily 
adopted for the expression of various feelings, and 
afterwards become so habitual as to be practically 
automatic. Such are the established usages of courtesy, 
by which we express kindliness, respect, and other 
social feelings. Under this head ought to be included 



334 Psychology. 

also the numerous exclamations which different persons 
adopt as expressions of joy, surprise, horror, and other 
emotions. All expressions of this class are particular in 
their character. They are limited to particular in- 
dividuals or to particular communities ; and their 
various forms are often determined by trivial accidents, 
so that they seldom illustrate, except in a very remote 
way, any universal law of human nature. (3.) But, after 
making every allowance for these two modes of express- 
ing emotion, there remain other expressive actions which 
are in all men apt to be stimulated by certain emotions, 
and which seem therefore to be connected with these by 
some general law. Such are the paleness of fear and the 
blush of shame, the arching of the eyebrows and open- 
ing of the mouth under the influence of surprise, the 
furrowing of the brow into a frown of anger, the curling 
of the lip into a sneer of scorn, and the effusion of tears 
in sorrow. Even the internal organs of the body are 
affected by various emotions. This is indicated in the 
use of the word hearty as well as of its equivalents in 
other languages, as a general name for the sensibility. 
The terms melancholy and splenetic connect the feelings 
they express with the liver and the spleen respectively ; 
while the Greek word airXdyx^a points to some influence 
of compassion on the bowels. 

These phenomena must have excited speculation at 
an early period. The surviving works of the ancient 
sculptors show that these artists had made the natural 
expressions of the emotions a subject of careful study. 
It is impossible also that mimicry and the histrionic art 
could have attained the perfection which they had 
reached in ancient Greece and Rome, unless play-actors 
had made at least an empirical acquaintance with the 
actions in which feelings are commonly expressed. The 



Expression of the Feelings. 335 

so-called science of physiognomy may be said to have 
aimed at explaining the physical expressions of feeling, 
though it went generally on the wrong scent by tracing 
peculiarities of temperament to permanent features of 
anatomical structure, or by interpreting them in the light 
of fanciful resemblances between human features and 
those of other animals which were supposed to be en- 
dowed with certain natural dispositions. 

A new epoch in the history of the study may be dated 
from the publication of Sir Charles Bell's Anatomy and 
Philosophy of Expression as connected with the Fine Arts y 
which appeared first in 1806 as a set of somewhat 
fragmentary essays, afterwards in 1844 in a greatly 
enlarged form. Another epoch is marked by Mr. 
Darwin's Expression of the Ei7iotions in Man and Animals 
(1872). This work, while tracing all emotional expres- 
sions to three laws, lays great stress on the influence of 
heredity in the formation of these expressions ; and it 
may, therefore, be taken as a monograph in exposition 
of the general evolution-theory, which is commonly 
associated with the name of the author. More recently 
Professor Wundt, while maintaining the general theory 
of evolution, has devoted some hostile criticism to 
Darwin's special theory of emotional expressions, and 
endeavours to explain them by three laws different from 
those of Darwin.* 



*See Wundt's Physiologische Psychologie, Vol. ii., pp. 418-428! 
and compare his article in the Deutsche Rundschau for April, 1877. 
Both Darwin and Wundt give a sketch of the literature of the 
subject. A more recent work by Dr. Warner, Physical Expres- 
sions : its Modes and Principles (1885), refers to movements that 
express phases of organic life rather than of mind, and deals there- 
fore with questions preliminary to those of emotional expression. 



33^ Psychology, 

It is evident, then, that we are still a good way from 
being able to formulate a law of the relation between 
feelings and their bodily manifestations. The subject is 
one where the inquiries of psychology and physiology 
become inextricably intertwined, and on a field where 
both psychologist and physiologist must walk with 
hesitating steps. The inquiry is, indeed, strictly speak- 
ing, physiological rather than psychological ; it concerns 
the functions of certain bodily organs in so far as these 
are affected by mental states. In the present condition 
of science, therefore, it seems preferable in a handbook 
to be content with an occasional notice of such facts as 
may seem to be of psychological interest in connection 
with the manifestation of the various emotions. Mean- 
while it may be observed that the tendency of emotions 
to associate with bodily symptoms is not equally strong 
in the case of all ; and in relation to this difference there 
is a generalisation of Hegel's, which seems sufficiently 
suggestive to deserve mention. He observes that our 
emotions may be separated into two classes as particular 
and universal, the former referring to the special condi- 
tion of the individual, like anger, shame, etc., while the 
latter includes those emotions which, like the aesthetic, 
moral, and religious, are free from any tinge of individual 
interests. The former preserve a close association with 
their bodily expressions, whereas the latter tend to 
liberate themselves from these accompaniments. More- 
over, owing to the complexity of our emotional life, the 
universal and the particular feelings often take on some 
of the characteristics of each other ; and the more any 
feeling tends towards particularisation, it tends also to 
embodiment in some form.* 

• Hegel's Encyklopadie) § 401. 



Classification of the Feelings. 337 



§ 3. — Classification of the Feelings. 

By their very nature as states of merely subjective 
excitement, the feelings cannot be made objects of such 
distinct conception as the cognitions. A distinct and 
exhaustive classification of them is, therefore, beyond 
the reach of psychology in its present stage. In their 
lowest form, indeed, as aspects of our sensations, they 
follow of course the classification of these; and in their 
higher forms it might at first sight appear as if they could 
be classified on the same principle as the sensations, 
that is, by reference to the bodily organs with which they 
are associated. It is true, they are not, like the sensa- 
tions, excited by affections of the bodily organs ; but we 
have seen in the previous section, that they are apt to 
excite such affections as their natural expression. This 
principle, however, is found to carry us only a little, way ; 
for it is often impossible to connect a peculiar affection 
of an organ with one emotion exclusively. A convincing 
illustration of this is afforded by one of the most familiar 
manifestations of feeling, namely, the action of grief on 
the lachrymal glands. For the same action is set up by 
the very different emotion of anger, and even by the 
opposite emotion of joy, so that tears of rage and tears of 
joy are almost as familiar in daily life as tears of sorrow. 
Indeed, almost any emotion at a high pitch of intensity 
seems capable of stimulating the secretion of tears \ 
while it is a still more remarkable fact, that the deepest 
griefs are tearless. 

44 Home they brought her warrior dead, 
She nor swooned nor uttered cry ; 
All her maidens watching said, 
She must weep or she will die." 
X 



33$ Psychology. 

No other princi; le of classifying the emotions has been 
suggested which is most obviously natural ; and con- 
sequently no classification has been proposed which has 
met with general acceptance.* Any classification sug- 
gested at present must, therefore, be merely provisional ; 
and the following is adopted mainly as a convenient 
order for describing the development of the emotions in 
our mental life. It starts from the rudimentary stage of 
feeling as simply the pleasurable or painful accompani- 
ment of sensation. It then proceeds on the assumption 
that the more complex phenomena of our emotional life, 
like those of our intellectual life, are developed by the 
two universal processes of mental action, association and 
comparison. As the former is the more primitive 
process, it seems natural to notice first those emotions 
which are due mainly to association, and then to take up 
those in which the higher process of comparison is the 
most prominent factor. There are other emotions which 
presuppose a certain development of intellectual and 
moral life, as they arise in connection with our cognitions 
and volitions. These two classes of emotions, which 
may appropriately be styled intellectual and moral, will 
naturally come last in our treatment. 



* In Professor Bain's The Emotions and the Will, Appendix B, 
the student will find a brief outline of some of the modern 
classifications. 



Feelings of Sense. 339 



CHAPTER I. 



FEELINGS OF SENSE. 

HERE feelings are considered as merely certain 
aspects of the elementary mental states, out of 
which the emotional life proper is developed. A 
superficial observation shows that, as sources of pleasure 
and pain, the rank of sensations is the reverse of that 
which they take as sources of knowledge. The more 
prominent in consciousness the pleasantness or painful- 
ness of a sensation, the less is it adapted for that calm 
contemplation of its intrinsic qualities by which our 
knowledge is built up. Consequently, the general 
sensations, in contrast with the special, are, as a rule, 
with the exception of the muscular, associated in 
consciousness almost exclusively with the pleasure or 
pain they afford, and but slightly, if at all, with any 
information they communicate. The sensations arising 
from the healthy or unhealthy action of the nerves, of the 
digestive and other organs, commonly intrude themselves 
into consciousness only as states of pleasure or pain. 
Occasionally, indeed, a mind of scientific habits or of 
practical prudence may, by observation and reasoning, 
arrive at a knowledge of important facts associated with 
such sensations ; but for the ordinary mind they remain 



340 Psychology. 

states of a vague uninterpreted delight or uneasiness. 
The result is, that feeling in such cases remains indis- 
solubly attached to the sensation in which it originates. 
Feelings of this primitive character may be of incalculable 
importance as contributing to the comfort and discomfort 
of our daily existence, which are of course essentially 
dependent on our animal condition. But as the sen- 
sations, arising from the functions of animal life, are in- 
capable of being distinctly observed and compared, they 
do not enter readily into association with other sensations 
to form those more complex states of feeling which 
compose our emotional life. 

Still it is not to be supposed that our emotional states 
are altogether dissociated from these vague general 
sensations. Occasionally we find the pleasantness or 
unpleasantness, characteristic of these sensations, applied 
to the description of feelings which have no apparent 
connection with sense. The heart is " broken " or 
"gnawed" with care, the feelings are "wounded," the 
spirit is "crushed." Often we are "cut" to the heart, we 
"burn" with impatience and other passions, we are 
"chilled" by a friend's unexpected manners. A certain 
"atmosphere of thought" is spoken of as "stifling," 
while we "breath a freer air " when we adopt a different 
set of convictions. Even the pleasures and pains, which 
are apt to be thought of as the most grossly animal of 
all, — the sensations of the alimentary canal, — may be 
transfigured in this way, as is shown in the secondary 
application of such terms as relish, zest, gusto, on the 
one hand, as nauseating and disgusting on the other. 
These feelings have, in fact, been exalted into a sort of 
sacredness in the memorable blessing of those who 
"hunger and thirst after righteousness." 

It is not always easy to tell how this transference of 



Feelings of Sense. 34 1 

the names of sensations is brought about. In some 
cases it seems to arise from a resemblance of some sort 
between the sensation and the feelings designated by 
its name. In other cases, however, its source is to be 
found in facts connected with the expression of the 
emotions. It was shown, in the immediately preceding 
Introduction, that emotions are associated in some way 
with various bodily organs, so that the affection or 
movement of these forms a more or less distinct 
expression of the associated emotions. This association, 
however originated, seems to react on the emotions ; 
and thus an organic affection or movement comes to be 
suggestive of the emotion which it primarily expressed. 
For this reason, if for no other, dyspepsia, which may 
be induced by various unpleasant passions, especially by 
those of a malevolent nature, tends to darken the 
mental life by passions of the same order; while, on the 
other hand, eupepsia, which is promoted by a cheerful 
and benevolent disposition, returns this favourable in- 
fluence by making the culture of such a disposition more 
natural. A careful observer may easily convince himself 
by experiment, that those movements of the facial 
muscles, which are among the most familiar manifesta- 
tions of feelings, — smiles, frowns, sneers, — can be made 
to excite in a vacant mind the emotions which they com- 
monly express ; and it is a significant confirmation of 
this, that, in hypnotic states in which the consciousness 
is dominated by purely natural associations, it is com- 
mon for an operator to introduce into his subject's mind 
any feelings or ideas he wishes by setting the features or 
limbs to some adjustment usually expressive of an 
emotion. 

There is another fact deserving of notice in this con- 
nection. Pleasure and pain, by whatever cause excited, 



342 Psychology. 

tend to combine with their natural emotional associates ; 
and consequently any agreeable sensation is favourable 
to joy, love, hope, and aesthetic delight, whereas any 
disagreeable sensation is apt to excite melancholy, ill- 
temper, fear, despair. 

But in all such cases it still remains a distinctive 
characteristic of the general sensations as a class, that 
they are not so adapted for entering into the vast 
combinations of feeling which form the most interesting 
as well as the most important feature of our emotional 
life. Such combinations have their chief source in the 
definitely comparable sensations of special sense, and 
especially of hearing and sight. In signalising these 
two senses it is meant that they are better adapted than 
any of the others for developing the more complicated 
emotions as well as the more complicated cognitions ; 
and this superior adaptation may be made evident by a 
comparison of the different senses in respect of their 
emotional power. 

I. Of the two less intellectual senses, taste and smell, 
almost enough has been of necessity said in analysing 
the cognitions which they go to form. The sensations 
of taste, though more distinctly marked than those of 
smell in our ordinary consciousness, were shown to be 
but slightly endowed with associability or comparability, 
and therefore to be incapable of distinct representation. 
Accordingly, it was observed that they do not readily 
enter into those ideal combinations, which are equally 
essential to emotional and intellectual development. 
Moreover, the sensations of taste are too closely bound 
up with the functions necessary for the preservation of 
life to admit of free indulgence in their pleasantness ; 
and this also, as we shall find, excludes them from 
aesthetic uses. Burke, indeed, thinks that the pains, — 



Feelings of Sense. 343 

we might say, the horrors, — of taste may enter into our 
feelings of the sublime ; but the only instance he gives is 
the literary use of the phrases, " a cup of bitterness/' 
" to drain the bitter cup of fortune," " the bitter appleb 
of Sodom."* With these may be compared such terms 
as "sweet" or "sour temper," "sour looks," "bitter 
fate," " honeyed words," " bitter language." Expressions 
of this sort are merely examples of what was noticed a 
few pages before, — the transference of the names of 
sensations to describe feelings which have no connection 
with sense ; and it may be questioned whether the use of 
these expressions ever approaches the character of sub- 
limity. 

II. The sense of smell, as already observed, is in man 
mainly emotional. It is true that, in many species of the 
lower animals, its organ is more developed and its uses are 
more numerous. It serves to attract the sexes, as well as 
parents and young, to one another ; it forms a guide 
in the discovery of food, in evading more powerful 
enemies, and in tracking prey. Whether these facts 
are causally connected with the emotional character of 
odours in man, is still a matter of conjecture. It is no 
mere conjecture, however, that in each individual these 
sensations afford many of the familiar pleasures of life. 
Not only the interested enjoyments of the table, but all 
the purer delights of forest and garden, of rural life in 
general, derive a large element from the pleasures of 
smell. This naturally leads us away from the simple 
sensations of odour to the emotional associations which 
they form ; but although the subject belongs properly to 
the next chapter, it is not altogether out of place to 



* Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and 
Beautiful, Tart ii., § 21, 



344 Psychology. 

notice the comparative readiness with which odours 
enter into such associations. It has long been observed, 
for example, that odours have an influence on the sexual 
feelings; and the use of incense in religious service points 
to some connexion with the feelings of devotion. It is 
true, that these emotional influences of smell are more 
prominent among Southern people ; and it may be in- 
ferred that the increased and uninterrupted development 
of odours under a warmer sun and a perpetual summer, 
is paralleled by an increased development of sensibility 
to their effects.* 

III. Touch is commonly conceived as more destitute 
of emotional character than any of the special senses. 
It is, therefore, a remarkable fact, that the term feeling, 
which is the most general name for the phenomena of 
pleasures and pains, has been borrowed from the sense of 
touch. As already hinted in treating of our tactile per- 
ceptions, the emotional side of this sense is probably 
overlooked from the fact that its contributions to our 
mental life have become largely absorbed in those of 
sight. Yet a more careful examination soon shows that 
the emotional elements of touch are neither few nor 
unimportant ; and that they obtrude themselves in our 
daily consciousness is shown by the fact, that a strong 
emotional impression is very commonly described by 
saying that we feel touched, while a strong emotional 
stimulant is spoken of as touching. The effect of touches 
upon our feelings varies according to the part of the skin 
affected, as well as the quality of the sensation excited. 

i. The emotional susceptibility of different parts of 



* Some interesting observations on this point will be found in a 
popular, but suggestive, little book by Dr. George Wilson, The 
Five Gateways of Knowledge, pp. 62-85 



Feelings of Sense. 345 

the skin evidently does not show a close parallel to their 
intellectual discriminativeness. The reason of this I take 
to be, not that the parts of great discriminative power 
are not also extremely sensitive to the pleasantness and 
unpleasantness of touches, but that the two modes of 
mental activity, cognition and emotion, are essentially 
incompatible. Accordingly where, as in the hand, con- 
sciousness is usually engrossed with the information 
given, the emotional uses of the organ are reduced to a 
minimum. Still the hand affords many tender delights, 
as well as many repulsive unpleasantnesses, of touch. 
It is the grasp of the hand that is taken, over most of the 
civilised world, as the appropriate expression of common 
kindly feelings. The tongue, though seldom used by 
man for discriminating anything but articles of food, and 
though the most acute part of the whole organism, is yet 
scarcely ever applied to emotional uses. But dogs, cows, 
and other animals, lick the objects of their affection. ' It 
is in parts not commonly employed for purposes of dis- 
crimination, that the highest emotional susceptibility is 
realised. The lip and cheek,* and even parts of lower 
intellectual rank, are commonly associated with the most 
delicious enjoyments of touch. 

2. Among the various kinds of tactual sensation, that 
which yields the purest and most independent pleasure 
is smoothness. Softness is also a plentiful source of 
agreeable sensations ; but it is more dependent on 
concomitant feelings, and accordingly it is more apt to 
be supplanted by such associations as a rough or clammy 
surface. On the other hand, even the hardest substances, 
when highly polished, are capable of yielding an inde- 
pendent delight in their smoothness. Even the pleasure 

* Some African tribes rub noses in expression of friendly feeling. 



346 Psychology. 

that we take in the sight of polished surfaces is, in a 
large measure, a revival by suggestion of the tactile feel- 
ing which such surfaces excite. The additional gratifica- 
tion, also, which we derive from gloss or lustre, though 
partly visual, is likewise partly due to its manifest 
suggestion of smoothness.* 

But the greatest volume of enjoyment, that we owe to 
touch, is found in the combination of its two most 
emotional sensations, smoothness and softness. The 
delicate petals of our common flowers, the downy 
feathers of birds, the sleek and glossy fur of many 
animals, are objects over which the fingers play with 
perpetual delight; while the use of feathers and furs for 
clothing, as well as the imitation of their qualities in 
cloths of velvety texture, rs evidently suggested by the 
agreeableness in the touch of smooth and soft bodies. 
But it is the human skin, especially in the infant and 
the female sex, that realises most completely the con- 
ditions of delight in tactual sensation; and the tenderness 
of such delight has furnished to thought and language a 
description characteristic of all kindly emotions. 

Among the pains of this sense hardness and roughness 
are of course the most prominent ; and their combina- 
tion, as in unwrought stone or unpolished iron, is as 
repulsive as the union of their opposites is attractive. 
The terms hard and rough are, therefore, of very 
extensive application to objects that excite emotions of a 
disagreeable nature. But it is important also to observe 
that smoothness and softness, especially the latter, are 



* The reader of Burke's Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of 
the Sublime and Beautiful, may recall the extravagant importance 
which he attaches to smoothness among the conditions of beauty. 
See especially iii., § 14, and iv., § 20-25. 



Feelings of Sense. 34/ 

themselves capable of an unpleasant excess. Perhaps 
the unpleasantness in such cases is due to defective 
stimulation ; and that may be the reason why the terms 
smooth and soft are often figuratively applied to objects 
of a mean and contemptible character. But whatever 
may be the cause of this unpleasantness, the pain of 
hard and rough impressions is undoubtedly due to 
excessive stimulation. Hardness evidently is akin to 
those violent pressures which crush and bruise the 
tissues. On the other hand, roughness resembles 
various sensations of an intermittent character, which 
were referred to before when explaining the nature 01 
discord. In such sensations it seems as if the inter 
mission gave time for the organ to recuperate, and thus 
to become capable of a wasteful degree of activity, 
which would be impossible under the numbing influence 
of a continuous stimulation. In this way we may 
explain the unpleasant effect produced by a discordant 
clash of sonorous vibrations, or by a flickering light. 
Thus also it would appear that instead of the continuous 
impression made by a smooth body, a rough surface, 
being formed of projections separated by minute intervals, 
owes its unpleasantness to the violent tactual excitement 
caused by a series of intermittent shocks. 

The sensation of weight is mainly muscular, but may 
be noticed here, as it is also to a slight extent tactual. 
The only definite enjoyment which such sensation 
yields is that arising from a weight light enough to be 
borne with moderate exertion, so that light comes to be 
descriptive of all performances that are made pleasant 
by being easy. On the other hand, the extreme easiness 
of any action is unsatisfying ; and consequently light is 
often applied to objects of contemptible triviality. But 
the decided form of uneasiness connected with this class 



348 Psychology. 

of sensations is that of excessive weight ; and therefore 
heavy is a term of wide use to describe the various 
feelings arising from the difficulties of life, by which its 
energies are oppressed. 

It only remains to add that, as touch is endowed in an 
eminent degree with distinct representability, its pleasures 
and pains enter readily into those ideal combinations 
which form the more complex emotions. Thus, " the 
touch of a vanished hand," and " remembered kisses 
after death," are referred to in well-known poems of the 
Laureate's as revivable with distinctness and suggestive 
with power enough to stir the deepest movements of our 
emotional nature. 

IV. Hearing is a sense of the very highest emotional 
value. Superior to touch in intellectual adaptation, it is 
superior also in capacity for pleasure and pain. In this 
capacity it is superior to sight as well, so that, although 
it does not ally itself so definitely with specific emotions, 
yet it originates some which stir our nature more pro- 
foundly. This is most familiarly illustrated in the 
influence of music. Here, it must be borne in mind, the 
influence of this art is considered, not in all its manifold 
character, but merely at its lowest — its sensuous stage. 
There is considerable difference of opinion as to the 
nature and origin of the emotional effects produced by 
music ; but all theories on the question must recognise a 
certain basis in organic sensibility, on which higher effects 
are built up. That sensibility implies, as has been ex- 
plained in earlier pages, a capacity for agreeable and 
disagreeable impressions, both from single tones, and 
from the melodic and harmonic relations of different tones. 

Single tones depend for their pleasant or unpleasant 
character on their intensity, their pitch, or their quality. 
Extremely loud or extremely shrill sounds are painful ; 



Feelings of Sense. 349 

and the pain seems obviously due to the violence of the 
organic action which they excite. Harsh qualities of 
tone have been already traced to the same cause as 
discords, — the inharmonious interference of the overtones 
with the fundamental tone.* Now, the unpleasantness 
of discord has just been explained as, like roughness, 
caused by a series of intermittent stimulations, which 
allow the organ to recover between each, and thus call 
forth a wasteful expenditure of energy, f On the other 
hand, the unsatisfactory character of the weak tones, 
which from the absence of overtones possess no decided 
quality, is perhaps due to defective stimulation. 

The sensibility to auditory enjoyment, however, in its 
refined forms, is a later growth of evolution in the indi- 
vidual as well as in the race. Not to speak of the 
innumerable harsh cries of the lower animals, or the 
deafening noises which monkeys delight to make by 
beating sticks as well as by screeching, it is evident that, 
in early life, when the auditory sensibility is still 
undeveloped, and the general nervous organisation robust, 
the ear can not only endure, but enjoy, violent excite- 
ments, — loud noises that irritate, if they do not stun, an 
adult ear, or wild tones that pay little or no regard to 
musical law. The coarse sensibility of the savage enables 
him also to find delight in a music which is distinguished 



* See Book ii., Part i., Chapter £., § 4 (B). ii. 

+ The depth of feeling which may be stirred by the mere organic 
effect of discord is strikingly displayed by the experience of 
hypnotic patients. "A discord, such as two semi-tones sounded 
at the same time, however sq/t, will cause a sensitive patient tc 
shudder and recede when hypnotised, although ignorant of music, 
and not at all disagreeably affected by such discord when awake." 
{Neurypnology, or the Rationale 0/ Nervous S/ee/>, by James Braid, 
p. 62, note). 



350 Psychology. 

mainly by its overpowering stimulation of the sense. It 
may be observed, moreover, that, as the limit of healthy 
excitement varies even in the individual for hearing as 
well as for other senses, men of general refinement, in 
hours of boisterous mirth, relapse not unnaturally into 
the early rude taste for uproarious song and clamour. 

There is, however, a peculiar richness in the emotional 
effects of music, which extend over a vastly wider area 
than the mere sensibility to sound. It is in fact 
practically impossible to set a limit to the feelings which 
may be stirred by this art ; and no psychological theory 
could be accepted as a complete account of the nature 
and origin of the emotional influence of music, which 
restricted that influence to one set of emotions, such as 
sexual feeling, or derived it exclusively from one class of 
sounds, like those of speech. The truth seems to be, 
that tones readily associate with all the leading emotions 
of the human soul, and that therefore the sensuous 
gratifications of tone become at once intermingled with 
some of the associated emotions, though which of these 
shall be stirred must be determined by the various cir- 
cumstances of the individual and of the moment. It is 
a significant fact that, in Collins' fine Ode to Music, the 
passions, though of the most conflicting order, are all 
pictured as resorting to this art, at once for their approp- 
riate stimulus and for their appropriate expression. 

V. The sensations of light and colour owe their pre- 
eminent intellectual value to their comparative neutrality 
in respect of pleasure and pain. The organic feeling is 
here so slight, that, in mature life, at least among 
educated minds, it is generally absorbed in the pre- 
dominant perceptions, with their intellectual and emo- 
tional accompaniments. Still the emotional side of 
visual sensation is not wholly obscured ; and among 



Feelings of Sense. 351 

children, as well as the untutored and uncivilised, who 
exercise less control over their feelings, the sensuous 
excitement of light and colour is frequently to be ob- 
served. 

1. The sensibility to visual pleasure commences with 
the earliest form of visual sensation. There can be no 
doubt of the fact, that for months before the child shows 
any appreciation of colours, he finds pleasure in pure 
light;* and this remains throughout life the simplest 
enjoyment of vision. This enjoyment, however, is of 
two kinds. 

(a) When pure light is spread over a large expanse, 
as in a luminous atmosphere with the sun away from 
the eyes, or even when it is softened, as by a lampshade, 
the sensation excited belongs to the gentle and soothing 
class, and consequently light has always been regarded 
as itself one of the purest of organic gratifications, and 
as affording a type of the purest gratifications of life in 
general. " Truly," says an old Hebrew, " the light is 
sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold 
the sun."f The note is one that is echoed by many a 
tone of ancient literature. So the light of life is often 
used as a symbol of all that makes life worth living ; 
while terms, like bright and serene, expressive of clear 
light, are found appropriately descriptive of general 
happiness, whereas terms, that express the absence of 
light, such as shadow or gloom, are extended naturally to 
any joyless condition of mind. 

(6) But light, when concentrated in brilliant centres. 



* Preyer, Die Seele des A'indcs, pp. 6-17. 

t Eccles. xi., 7. The commentators cite in illustration 
Euripides, Iphig. in Aulis, vs. 1218 :—i}8v yhp t6 <f>u>s flkiireip. 



352 Psychology. 

is a powerful stimulant. The sensation produced is 
then of an exciting character ; and its enjoyment 
indicates, therefore, a coarser sensibility. The pleasure 
that we find in bonfires and pyrotechnic displays does 
not imply any refinement of sense. 

2. It is also a coarser sensibility that draws its 
pleasures from the colours at the red end of the 
spectrum. Experiments show that these are the 
earliest to be recognised by the child;* and they 
remain throughout life the most exciting forms of 
colour-sensation. The ecstasy of children and savages 
at the sight of brilliant reds is an evidence of the strong 
effect which these produce. A curious illustration of 
this effect is sometimes found in states of mental 
disease, when the consciousness falls away from rational 
control into the sway of mere natural sensation. Thus, 
the dancers of St. John and St. Vitus in Germany were 
infuriated, while the Tarantati of Italy were thrown into 
an ecstasy of delight, by red colours.! This effect is 
further illustrated by the experience of some of the 
patients cured of congenital blindness, while their 
visual sensations still retained the impressiveness of 
novelty. Cheselden's patient is said to have thought 
scarlet the most beautiful of all colours, and of others 
those pleased him most which were "gay," — an 
expression I take to mean those in which red is the 
predominant tint. On the other hand, black gave him. 
uneasiness, and a negro at first excited feelings of 
horror. It is perhaps indicative of some individual, or 
zX least feminine, characteristic, that Wardrope's patient 

* Preyer, pp. 6-17. 

}• Hecker's Epidemics of tlie Middle Ages, Part ii., pp. 17, 19, 
• ote, 29, 41. 



Feelings of Sense. 353 

thought the blue sky the prettiest thing she had ever 
seen ; but, when tried with other colours, she liked 
yellow best, then pink. Apparently dark objects looked 
ugly to her as they did to Cheselden's patient.* The 
more violent emotions, therefore, seem naturally to 
associate with red colours, while the colours at the 
other end of the spectrum have an affinity rather with 
the milder emotions, f 

3. While light, pure or coloured, is the peculiar 
sensation of sight, the eye seems adapted to receive 
pleasurable impressions from other visual phenomena as 
well. Form, indeed, might be thought to require an 
intellectual appreciation for its enjoyment ; but as har- 
mony of tones and probably also harmony of colours, 
answer to some adaptation in the organs of hearing and 
sight, form also seems to be the source of a purely 
organic pleasure, even though the gratification it affords 
be partly derived from the intellectual activity which it 
calls forth. In consequence of the various factors of 
visual gratification being thus usually intermingled, it is 
difficult to obtain direct evidence of the above statement ; 
but it seems to be certified by the fact, that Cheselden's 



* Philosophical Transactions, 1826, pp. 534-5. 

f What makes the reds more exciting than other colours, is not 
certain ; but it has been conjectured that the less frequent 
occurrence of the former in nature allows the sensibility of the 
eye for them longer periods of repose, and consequently a higher 
degree of stimulation without being exhausted. This, however, is 
by no means obviously the most natural explanation. In any 
theory it is perhaps worth while to keep in view the fact, that, 
though red rays themselves are not favourable to vegetation, yet the 
processes of plant-life are stimulated by orange and yellow more 
powerfully than by any other colours, while these processes are 
almost arrested by the rays towards the violet end of the spectrum. 

Y 



354 Psychology. 

patient received a peculiar pleasure from smooth and 
regular bodies at a time when he had not yet learnt to 
distinguish shapes by sight, and could not tell what it 
was in bodies that made them pleasing.* The pleasure 
which the eye takes in well-shaped bodies may, indeed, 
not be, in the most restricted sense, a visual sensation \ 
it may be due rather to the easy muscular sweep of the 
eye while surveying such objects in contrast with the 
broken, and therefore more violent, effort of grasping an 
angular or irregular form. For the muscles, being 
mostly levers resting on a fulcrum at one end, describe 
most easily a curved line with the other, so that any 
line with abrupt angle6 is the result of an uneasy strain 
until it becomes easy by discipline. But the pleasure 
we take in the form of visible bodies, even if it belongs 
to the muscular sensations, is noticed here for con- 
venience, as it affords an opportunity of pointing out 
how insensibly the organic pleasures of sight pass over 
into that larger store of mingled sensuous and intellectual 
enjoyments, of which the visible world is the source. 
The very simplest perceptions of sight cannot but open 
up this world of joy to some extent. It is true, that 
to most minds the visible world has become so stale, 
that its perennial delightfulness is seldom felt; but 
there are few who are not incited at times to a fresh 
relish of its pleasures, while there are many who continue 
to find in them the purest enjoyment of life. Most men 
have probably overcome the numbing effect of the 
world's staleness at times, as when, after the organism 



* The exact words of the report are : — "He thought no object 
so agreeable as those which are smooth and regular, though he 
could form no judgment of their shape, nor guess what it was ia 
any object that was pleasing." 



Feelings of Sense. 355 

has had its sensibility quickened by a night's repose, 
they have opened their eyes to the splendours of the 
dawn ; and the memory of such an experience may 
enable us to realise the keenness of the delight with 
which the visible world discloses itself to the view for the 
first time. It is said of Cheselden's patient, that, "before 
he was couched, he expected little advantage from seeing 
worth undergoing an operation for, except reading and 
writing \ for he said, he thought he could have no more 
pleasure in walking abroad than he had in the garden, 
which he could do very safely and readily." But after 
his sight was restored, " he said, every new object was a 
new delight, and the pleasure was so great, that he 
wanted ways to express it ; but his gratitude to his 
operator he could not conceal, never seeing him for 
some time without tears of joy in his eyes and other 
marks of affection : and if he did not happen to come 
at any time when he was expected, he would ,be so 
grieved that he could not forbear crying at his disappoint- 
ment. A year after first seeing, being carried to Epsom 
Downs, and observing a large prospect, he was exceed- 
ingly delighted with it, and called it a new kind of 
seeing." 

VI. As being of peculiar importance among the 
general sensations, those of the muscular sense deserve 
special mention here. It has been already observed 
that the feelings of tension and of slow movement are 
most valuable for purposes of cognition, while those of 
rapid movement are most obstrusively sources of pleasure 
and pain. The sensations of mere tension — of a dead 
strain — are probably least emotional. There are, indeed, 
certain pleasures and pains connected with the support 
of the body in an erect posture, with the steady resistance 
to any force, with being baffled by an insuperable 



356 Psychology. 

obstacle ; but these emotional effects are largely due to 
associated ideas rather than to the mere sensations 
involved. 

The emotional character of the muscular sense is more 
decidedly seen in the sensations connected with move- 
ment. Even slow movements are not without some 
pleasures and pains. Their sensations are of the mild 
and soothing type; and accordingly they are often of 
service when a soothing effect is desired. This effect is 
heightened by the fact that slow movements, at least in 
early life, when our most common ideas are formed, 
scarcely ever arise from a vigorous condition of the 
muscles, but rather from their exhaustion or decay. 
Slow movements are therefore felt to be in harmony 
with conditions of weariness and sadness. They are 
adopted in the rock of the cradle and in the lullaby to 
soothe a child fretful with sleepiness. We prefer a staid 
gait and sedate manners, quiet talk and slow music, 
when tired with a hard day's work, or when saddened by 
any mournful event ; and in general the aged exhibit this 
preference at all times. Mainly to the same cause also 
must we ascribe the pace of funerals, the elocution 
of religious services, the time of plaintive and solemn 
music. On the other hand, to the young, and to all in 
the fresh vigour of health, slow movements are apt to 
supply but an imperfect outlay of energy; and in the slang 
which fast society has originated, as already remarked, 
slow is a common and not inexpressive term for anything 
insipid. 

The sensations of rapid movement are of the exciting 
type, and in excessive forms approach the nature of 
intoxication. The mercurial movements of the young, 
the exuberant muscular display of the healthy, are 
evident sources of keen animal enjoyment. Skating, 



Feelings of Sense. 357 

with the unusual speed and grace and novelty of its 
motions, affords one of the most delicious and healthy 
forms of this pleasure. The dance also derives a large 
share of its attraction from the same source, though, from 
the accessory circumstances in which it is frequently 
enjoyed, it is more apt to work an unhealthy excitement, 
and thus to acquire the tyrannous fascination of coarser 
stimulants. This is proved not so much by the excess 
with which this muscular excitement is sought in the 
common dissipations of society, but still more strikingly 
in the frenzied extravagance of barbaric religious festivals, 
in which the dance forms a prominent ceremony. The 
worship of Demeter and Dionysus in the ancient world, 
the dancing manias of the middle ages, and the boister- 
ous exhibitions of religious ecstasy in some modern 
communities, are instances of the intoxicating excite- 
ment that may be stimulated by the rapid rhythmical 
movements of a dance. 

Such is feeling at its rudimentary stage of mere sen- 
sation. By the process of abstraction a sensation may 
attract attention to one of its aspects exclusive of the 
others ; and thus its pleasantness or unpleasantness 
may become predominant without regard to any of its 
other qualities. Usually the pleasure or pain, of which 
at any moment we are conscious, arises from a variety of 
sources ; and therefore, even if partly or wholly due to 
sense, it loses the definiteness belonging to any single 
pleasant or unpleasant sensation. There thus results 
sometimes a feeling of vague agreeableness or disagree- 
ableness, — that emotional state which we express by 
such terms as joy, gladness, delight, mirth, cheerfulness, 
on the one hand, by grief, sadness, sorrow, on the 
other. 

But, to understand our emotional life in all its rich- 



358 Psychology. 

ness, we must investigate the specific forms which this 
general agreeableness and disagreeableness assume under 
the play of modifying influences. These influences, 
when external, can act only through the processes of 
mind ; and the process, which comes into play first, is 
association. 



Feelings Originating in Association. 359 



CHAPTER II. 



FEELINGS ORIGINATING IN ASSOCIATION. 

ASSOCIATION gives a peculiar tinge to our feelings 
by connecting them in consciousness with their 
objects or causes. The conscious states, thus originated, 
are described by such terms as liking and dislike, love 
and hatred, as well as other synonymous expressions, 
some of which will be noticed immediately. The 
formation of such states is easily intelligible from, the 
nature of the pleasures and pains, out of which they 
arise. These pleasures and pains have their origin in 
certain objects, with which they are thus necessarily 
co-existent. When we become conscious of this co- 
existence, an association is formed between the feeling 
and its object, so that the feeling will recall the object, 
or, as happens probably oftener, the object, even when 
merely remembered or imagined, may revive the feeling 
with which it was associated. But observe the effect 
which this has on our emotional relation to the object. 
If the feeling involved is pleasant, then, from the 
very nature of pleasure, there is an instinctive impulse 
to prolong it ; if it is painful, there is a similar 
impulse to bring it to an end. But I cannot pro- 
long a pleasure without keeping in consciousness 
the object which causes it; I cannot biing a pain 



360 Psychology. 

to an end without banishing its object from conscious 
ness.* It is for this reason, that, in the former case, I 
am said to " dwell upon " the object, to " linger over " 
it, to " take pleasure in " it, such phrases being often 
used as synonymous with liking or love. On the other 
hand, dislike or hatred is often expressed by such terms 
as aversion and revulsion ; its object is described as 
repulsive, — as one that we cannot " brook," f that we 
can " take no pleasure in," that we are " displeased 
with," — as one that we cannot " bear," % that we cannot 
" bear the sight of," that we " cannot away with." 

The object of a feeling must here be understood in 
its widest sense. Frequently of course, — perhaps most 
frequently, — it is the natural cause of a feeling, that is, 
the phenomenon which, by its natural properties, is 
adapted to produce the feeling. Thus a sensible body 
produces with a healthy constitution its appropriate 
sensation , the death of a friend naturally awakens 
sorrow ; the good opinion of another gives us joy. In 
other cases, however, an object becomes associated 
with a feeling by a mere accident ; and its subsequent 
power to excite the feeling depends, not on its intrinsic 
properties, but merely on its accidental association. 
Only by bearing this in mind can we explain the fact, 



* "Amor nihil aliud est, quam laetitia concomitante idea causae 
extemae ; et odium nihil aliud, quam tristitia concomitante idea 
causae externae. Videmus deinde quod ille, qui amat, necessario 
conatur rem, quam amat, praesentem habere, et conservare ; et 
contra, qui odit, rem, quam odio habet, amovere et destruere 
conatur. (Spinoza, Ethica, hi., 13, Scholium). 

t Anglo-Saxon brucan, enjoy. 

X Suffer, endure, tolerate, as well as the Old English and Scotch 
thole, are also employed. 



Feelings Originating in Association. 361 

that the most unreasonable hatreds are often formed for 
persons intrinsically loveable, while love clings at times 
with tragic pathos to those who have done everything by 
which love is commonly repelled. For the same reason 
any paltry article, like many a keepsake, that is intrinsi- 
cally of trivial value in relation to pleasure or pain, may 
yet become linked with a power to awaken either an un- 
speakable gladness, or a sorrow 

" Whose muffled motions blindly drown 
The bases of the life in tears." 

It is evident, therefore, this description includes a range 
of emotions second to none either in their variety or in 
their importance as factors of human life. 

As our feelings of liking and dislike may have their 
sources in external nature or in ourselves or in other 
persons, they may be conveniently studied under these 
three heads. 



§ 1. — Feelings for External Nature. 

All the phenomena of the external world, organic and 
inorganic alike, are capable of exciting various modes 
and degrees of fondness and revulsion, according to the 
predominence of pleasure or pain in the impressions 
they produce on our consciousness. Occasionally also 
they awaken that mingled state of feeling, in which 
delight and aversion strangely alternate. Varieties in 
the form of these feelings may be determined by single 
definite objects, on the one hand, or, on the other, by 
more or less indefinite groups of objects. 

(A) The definite object of a liking or dislike may be 
an animal, a plant, or any inanimate thing ; and the 
feeling for it may be based either on the effect of its 



362 Psychology. 

intrinsic properties on our sensibility, or on some 
extrinsic association. We need not dwell again on the 
fact, that any object may, by the merest accident, 
become linked in our consciousness with agreeable or 
disagreeable feelings. It is well known, that many 
ennobling sentiments, as well as some of the most 
whimsical infatuations of human life, have their origin in 
this cause. But in the evolution of our feelings for 
nature we shall discover the same tendency which may 
be traced in the general evolution of mind, — the tendency 
to liberate our emotional life from subjection to the 
merely natural effects of association, to raise it into the 
free control of reason. 

Consequently, the most interesting feelings of this 
class are probably those which are due to intrinsic 
properties in the object of love or aversion. The special 
interest, centring on such emotions, consists in the fact 
that they enter into the feelings of the beauty and 
ugliness, with which we invest natural objects. These 
feelings must be considered again j but at present it may 
be mentioned that some writers have ascribed them 
entirely to association. There is at least this inadequacy 
in such a theory, that it overlooks the intrinsic pleasant- 
ness of the sensation:, especially of sight and hearing, 
which beautiful objects are adapted to produce. The 
primrose may to many be " a primrose and nothing 
more;" but it is a primrose, — an object endowed with 
the property of producing certain sensations in every 
human sensibility. 

At the same time there is this of truth in the theory, 
that the agreeableness of a beautiful object is not to be 
found, solely or even mainly, in the pleasant sensations 
which it is intrinsically qualified to produce. The very 
fact, that to the uncultured mind the primrose is simply 



Feelings Originating in Association. 363 

a primrose and nothing more, implies that, while it 
produces the natural sensations of a primrose, it fails to 
open up the world of thought and sentiment, with which 
it can become associated by culture. Without, there- 
fore, foreclosing further inquiry into the feelings of 
beauty, it is evident that these must draw largely from 
the associations which mental culture forms. This 
conclusion is confirmed by the most hurried reflection 
on the poetry which interprets for us the influence of 
natural objects over the soul. If the poet lingers with 
aesthetic delight over a "wee modest crimson-tipped 
flower," it is because 

" To him the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

(B) But this feeling for nature takes a larger range, 
when it attaches to no limited object, but embraces an 
indefinite group of phenomena. It is thus, that we may 
describe the sentiment excited by scenery. Evidently 
such a feeling presupposes a considerable development 
of mental culture. The child, during the first few 
months of life, is extremely restricted in his grasp of 
things. He notices an object near his eyes, or clasped 
in his hands ; he catches any distinct or startling sound 
in the immediate neighbourhood : but even a limited 
group of objects, such as make up the general appear- 
ance of a room, is obviously beyond his apprehension. 
He requires a longer growth to seize intelligently the 
entire view of a garden or a field, or the nearest 
surroundings of home ; and he may never attain the 
ability to master for intellectual or emotional results 
the vast outline and variegated colour and innumerable 
subordinate features of an extensive landscape. 



364 Psychology. 

It need scarcely be said that the pleasantness or 
unpleasantness of a scene is sometimes purely extrinsic. 
The dominating mood of the soul at the moment when 
a scene is viewed may overpower the most pronounced 
natural adaptation to give pleasure or pain. Innumer- 
able illustrations of this are to be found in the love-songs 
of all literature. Drawing their imagery mainly from 
nature, these lyrics give an infinite variety of expression 
to the psychological fact, that the cheerful or gloomy 
aspect of the external world depends mainly on the 
mood of the ruling passion. Through all their changes 
runs the general strain, — 

*' Except I be by Silvia in the night, 
There is no music in the nightingale." 

It is thus that the most charming landscape may become 
to the sorrowful spirit invested in a gloom which it will 
wear throughout life, while it requires little inherent 
attractiveness about the scenery of a happy home to 
make it capable of awakening a deeper and more varied 
joy than any other part of the world. Even the 
disinterested enjoyment of beautiful scenery is closely 
dependent on the pleasantness of the circumstances in 
which a scene is visited ; and the great extension of this 
emotion in very recent times is probably due in a 
considerable measure to the facilities for comfortable 
travelling in modern railway-coaches and steamers and 
luxurious hotels. 

But the development of the emotional life, as of the 
intellectual, is essentially an elevation above the tyranny 
of merely natural influences, — of temporal and spatial 
associations. Consequently the expansion of our love, 
as well as of our hatred, for natural scenes is continually 
raising us out of merely natural into rational feeling. It 



Feelings Originating in Association. 365 

is thus that the cultivated emotional nature refuses ever 
more and more to be subjugated by selfish or restricted 
associations which are meaningless for men in general ; 
and, while not ignoring the natural power of such 
associations, seeks its enjoyment rather in those that are 
of universal interest to intelligent beings. As it grows, 
therefore, from the intellectual and emotional grasp of 
the little nook to that of the vast landscape opening from 
a mountaintop, so it may expand into what has been not 
inappropriately called " cosmic emotion," — an emotion 
which, though not exhausting the religious sentiment, 
yet forms not its least noble factor in the higher order of 
minds. The poetry of the Hebrews shows at what an 
early period man had learnt to look with devout feeling 
on the sublimer phenomena of nature;* and the larger 
insight into the vastness of the universe, which is a chief 
result of modern science, has surely not weakened this 
feeling. " When I gazed into these stars, have they pot 
looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene 
spaces, like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the 
little lot of man ! Thousands of human generations, all 
as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of time, 
and there remains no wreck of them any more ; and 
Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still 
shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the 
Shepherd first noted them in the plains of Shinar."f 

In the same way the dislike, which is limited at first 
to single objects or scenes that are intrinsically or 
extrinsically painful, may expand into a pessimistic 
emotion in view of the universe ; and to such a mood 

♦Compare especially Job ix., 6-9; Psalms viii., xix., 1-6, and 
civ. 

+ Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, 'Rook ii., Chapter 8, 



366 PsycJiology. 

the stars, no longer "glistening with heavenly tears," 

may become 

11 Tyrants in their iron skies, 
Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, 
Cold fires, but with power to burn and brand 
His nothingness into man."* 

§ 2. — Feelings for Self. 

Like external nature and other human beings, we 
ourselves are adapted to excite agreeable and disagree- 
able feelings in our own consciousness; and this power 
must be ascribed to all the varied features of our nature, 
external and internal. Not only our permanent 
characters, but also our occasional thoughts and feelings 
and actions, our personal appearance, our dress, and 
even the estimate taken of us by others, are all capable 
of exciting varied states of emotion. Here again the 
evolution of feeling is in the direction already indicated, 
from the tyranny of restricted influences to delight in 
the sources of enjoyment that are universal. 

The general form of these self-regarding emotions is, 
on the one hand, self-complacency in the contemplation 
of anything about ourselves that is calculated to give 
pleasure, on the other hand, a dissatisfaction with 
ourselves on account of anything that is fitted to produce 
pain. It is not of course necessary that the feature, 
causing pleasure or pain, should be really attached to us. 
It need only be before the consciousness, whether as a 
known fact or as an imagined fiction ; and therefore not 
a few forms of self-gratulation, as well as of self-torture, 
are based on nothing more substantial than the power of 
.fancy. 

* Tennyson's Maud, xviii., 4. 



Feelings Originating in Association. 367 

Self-complacency, though often based on fanciful 
grounds, tends under culture to grow into that self- 
respect, that " honest pride," that feeling of " honour," 
which forms an important element of moral character. 
In like manner dissatisfaction with oneself tends ever 
more and more to be confined to the shock of pain 
which is felt on doing wrong, and to form therefore the 
distinctively moral sentiment known as remorse. 

The feeling of shame evidently arises from such 
disagreeable impressions as originate other forms of 
self-dissatisfaction ; its peculiarity seems mainly due to 
the fact, that it implies a reference to the actual or 
possible knowledge by others of the circumstance which 
causes the disagreeable impression. This enables us to 
explain the confusion in thought and language between 
shame and a feeling so different as modesty. Any 
unusual exposure before others, such as even the 
introduction to strangers, is apt to produce, in sensitive 
natures, a shock like that which is due to the real or 
fancied inspection by others of something unworthy in 
us ; and the emotional shrinking from such exposure 
constitutes the essential character of modesty.* 

The feeling of shame connects itself thus with the 
love of esteem. This emotion was regarded by many of 
the older psychologists as an instinctive form of human 
sensibility ; but it requires no very skilful analysis to find 



* Mr. Darwin's theory of blushing chimes in with this account of 
the emotion which it expresses. He regards it as due to the 
unusual attention directed to the exposed part of the body causing 
an unusual discharge of blood in that direction, and he finds that 
it diffuses itself over a larger surface of the body among races that 
do not dress so completely as civilised men. {Expiession of ihl 
Emotions, Chapter xiii.). 



368 Psychology. 

in association with the good opinion of others many 
pleasantnesses which make the desire of esteem 
intelligible, as well as the dislike of reproach. 

In some minds' this desire grows to remarkable 
intensity. All the great movements of history, — 
military, political, ecclesiastical, literary, — bring out men 
in whom the love of fame is a strong passion. Though 
ethically not the highest principle of action, it becomes 
valuable as an aid to more purely ethical motives in 
that happy coincidence when fame points in the direction 
of duty. 

" Not once or twice in our fair island-story 
The path of duty was the way to glory."* 

In truth, the love of merited praise acts as a not incon- 
siderable stimulus in the better class of minds; and 
insensibility to the esteem of others is an evidence 
either of extraordinary elevation or of equally extra- 
ordinary degradation. With truth, therefore, Milton 
may speak of fame as "the last infirmity of noble mind." 
An aspiration, having its root in the love of esteem, 
enters into the religious consciousness in the form of a 
desire to please God, and win His favour. It is such a 
serene aspiration that Milton has in view in that glorious 
passage of Lycidas ) from which a familiar phrase has just 
been cited, — 

M Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 

Nor in the glistering foil 

Set off to the world, nor in broad humour lies, 
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes 
And perfect judgment of all seeing Jove." 



* Tennyson'* Ode on the Death qf Wellington, 



Feelings Originating in Association. 369 

There are two remarkable evidences of the strength of 
this desire in human life : one is the desire of an esteem 
which we can never enjoy ; the other, the desire of an 
esteem which we do not deserve. 

1. The love of posthumous fame cannot, from the 
necessities of life, be a prominent feeling in the human 
mind ; but it is by no means an unknown experience for 
men to find pleasure in the imagined praises of posterity. 
Indeed, some writers of the present day maintain that a 
similar feeling, — the feeling of satisfaction at anticipating 
in fancy the beneficent results of our influence on pos- 
terity, — may take the place, as a motive in human life, 
of the Christian faith in immortality. 

2. But it is perhaps a more striking proof ol the 
strength of the craving for esteem, that, when men are 
unable to secure it by desert, they are eager to win it by 
any means, rather than lose the gratification it affords. 
This eagerness appears in two forms. It may be a 
desire to get esteem for things that are not estimable, as 
implying no merit on our part. Such is the vanity of 
personal appearance, of family connection, of dress and 
other external displays of wealth. Or, again, this desire 
may seek esteem for qualities which are estimable, but 
which we do not possess. Such are the intellectual 
vanity of the ignoramus, and the moral vanity of the 
hypocrite. 

All the self-regarding emotions imply the presence in 
consciousness of an ideal by which we judge ourselves, 
whether this be the good opinion of others, or some 
abstract standard of goodness. All men are apt to have 
forced on them the contrast between this ideal and their 
actual attainments ; and the feeling of this contrast is 
humility. 



370 Psychology. 

§ 3. — Feelings for Others. 

The largest and most varied class of our likings and 
dislikes are those which relate to other persons. To 
these the term affection has been restricted by many of 
the older writers, and a distinction drawn between 
affections that are benevolent and those that are male- 
volent. In the ordinary use of language affection for a 
person is understood to mean benevolent feeling. 

There is no class of feelings where the complications 
of our emotional life appear so intricate, and baffle so 
completely all attempts at an exhaustive analysis, even 
by the most cautious and laborious science. Literary 
art, using as its favourite material the interests of human 
life, and obliged to represent these in all their concrete 
variations, is more successful in giving descriptions, and 
perhaps even analyses, of the affections than can be 
drawn by the abstractions of science. It is true, that 
the general source of affections is not hard to trace. It 
is to be found in the fact, that pleasure and pain can be 
derived, not only from external nature and from 
ourselves, but also from other persons. The vast 
variety, however, of the circumstances on which affection 
depends, and the complexity of their endless combina- 
tions, place their emotional effects altogether beyond the 
range of the most skilful analysis. We may enumerate 
facts both in the inner and outer life of men, by which 
our feelings are excited or modified. We may remind 
ourselves, that even circumstances, like rank, wealth, 
nationality, party-connection, and other social relation 
ships, wholly intrinsic to an individual, may alter 
entirely our affection for him ; that we receive some of 
our most powerful influences from external features like 
beauty or ugliness of figure, of manner, or of dress 



Feelings Originating in Association, 371 

itself; that, in instances of rarer culture, we seek our 
emotional stimulants mainly in the intellectual or moral 
character and achievements of others. We may also 
keep in view the fact, that some of the most passionate 
affections are based on no more solid ground than mere 
fancies. But were a complete enumeration of the causes 
of emotion possible, it would still be necessary to keep 
in mind, that their influence is greatly modified by each 
individual's general susceptibility and by its varying 
moods. The truth is, that the multitudinous aspects 
which a human being may present to the mind, and the 
multitudinous modes in which these may affect us, far 
surpass in number and variety the influences exerted by 
any object in nature ; for while man is a natural 
product, he is something infinitely more. The result is, 
that he is capable of awakening all the emotions which 
are due to natural objects, with many others of a more 
subtle character that are peculiar to himself. 

Among the influences which may be specially noticed 
as giving a tinge to our affections, prominence should be 
given to the feelings of others, so far, of course, as these 
can be read in their outward manifestations. Here the 
analysis of psychologists and moralists has been singu- 
larly imperfect, when contrasted with the achievements 
of dramatic skill in the literature of history and fiction. 
It has been too often assumed that the feelings of others 
excite always kindred feelings in ourselves, that their 
pleasure pleases, and that their pain pains us. This is 
an amiable assumption, but the darker phases of human 
life forbid us to regard it as true. Both the pleasures 
and the pains of others exert a complex emotional effect. 
Even if we set aside obscurer feelings, such as wonder, 
novelty, fear, contempt, which often impart a peculiar 
shade to our affections, it still remains an important fact 



372 Psychology. 

that fellow-feeling is not the only emotional state excited 
by the pleasures and pains of others. Along with this 
sympathetic effect there is another which by contrast 
may be called antipathetic. Before we proceed further, 
therefore, this subject demands a careful investigation. 

I. We shall take first the sympathetic effect. In its 
generality this emotional phenomenon is most unequivo- 
cally expressed by the term fellow-feeling. The needs of 
human life make fellow-feeling with the sufferings of one 
another by far the more important exercise of this 
emotion. This circumstance explains the fact in lan- 
guage, that, while we have several terms to express 
fellow-feeling with pain, there is none restricted to the 
specific expression of fellow-feeling with pleasure. On 
the one hand, there are such terms as pity, commiseration, 
compassion, condolence; and even sympathy itself is most 
frequently employed with the same limitation. On 
the other hand, words, like congratulation, complacency, 
complaisance, which signify literally fellow-feeling with 
pleasure, have all received a somewhat different meaning. 

Of fellow-feeling in its widest sense the source is the 
same as that of imitation.* Both imply the reproduc- 
tion by ourselves of what is apprehended outside of 
ourselves. Of this imitative or sympathetic tendency 
an instinctive basis is perhaps to be found in an un- 
conscious agency of the nervous system. We do not 
allude to those instances, in which one member is said 
to sympathise with another in the same organism, as, 
for example, eye with eye or ear with ear; for these 
have no natural affinity with the phenomena of sympathy, 



*In common language sympathy is applied to the reproduction 
rather of the feelings of others, imitation to the reproduction of their 
movements. See Bain's The Emotions and the Will, p. 172. 



Feelings Originating in Association. 373 

properly so called. But it is a familiar fact, that the 
sight of tears, the sound of a sob or wail, tends, by 
an automatic impulse, to excite tears, sobs or wailing in 
ourselves. A yawn or a smile by one person may set a 
whole company yawning or laughing; and you may see 
a crowd of gaping rustics swaying their bodies in corres- 
pondence with the admired movements of an acrobat. 
Children may even be heard at times responding, in the 
same unreflective way, to the bark of a dog, the bleating 
of a sheep or the crowing of a cock. How far these 
imitative or sympathetic instincts are the result of educa- 
tion in the individual or in the race, it is impossible to 
say with certainty. 

But these automatic movements do not yet constitute 
fellow-feeling. To reproduce in our consciousness the 
feeling of another person requires that we should 
apprehend what this feeling is. Consequently, fellow- 
feeling is impossible without a certain act of intelligence, 
and it is not difficult to understand why the required act 
of intelligence should be associated with this emotional 
accompaniment. This will be most clearly seen by 
referring in the first instance to the lower order of 
feelings. When I represent any sensation, — a touch, a 
sound, or a colour, — the representation is evidently but 
the revival of the sensation in a fainter degree. It is a 
well known fact even that the representation implies a 
revival of the same sort of nervous thrill, by which the 
organ was stirred during the original sensation. In like 
manner, when a muscular movement is represented, a 
faint twitch is started in the same muscular region which 
the original movement called into play. Now, a large 
number of the pleasures and pains of others, with which 
we feel sympathy, are sensations; and the sympathy felt 
is simply a fainter revival in our own organism of the 



374 Psychology. 

pleasurable or painful sensations which others are 
conceived to feel. It is thus that all men, even of 
moderate sensibility, on observing another person suffer 
a severe bodily injury, are apt to feel a pang shoot 
through the corresponding part of their own bodies; and 
many are unable to look at serious wounds owing to their 
vivid realisation of the pain endured. 

Apply all this to pure emotions. These can be made 
known to us, of course, only by their expression in 
language or by some other form of bodily manifestation. 
It is obviously requisite, however, that the expression of 
the emotion be intelligently interpreted by us ; in other 
words, that we represent to ourselves, with some degree 
of distinctness, the emotion that is expressed. But the 
representation of an emotion is its revival in our own 
consciousness ; and, consequently, the intelligent appre- 
hension of an emotion felt by another person is a fellow- 
feeling with him. This analysis is confirmed by the 
fact, that in all the lower grades of culture the power of 
sympathy remains extremely rudimentary and restricted 
in its range, while its expansion keeps pace with the 
evolution of general intelligence. It is true, that human 
life, especially among civilised communities, owes many 
alleviations of its sorrows, and much even of the sweet- 
ness of social intercourse, to persons in whom a 
comparatively limited intelligence is combined with a 
remarkable quickness of sympathy. But it will be found 
that, however limited the general range of intelligence in 
such persons may be, it has been specially directed to 
the interpretation of all the familiar symptoms of suffer- 
ing, and that, therefore, in the interpretation of these, it 
often outstrips intellects that have become famous by 
grappling successfully with the complicated problems of 
nature or of political or military affairs. On the other 



Feelings Originating in Association, 375 

hand, the dependence of sympathy on the intelligent 
apprehension of the feelings of others is strikingly 
evinced by the fact, that the finest emotional nature may 
at times be seen exhibiting an unpleasant callousness in 
presence of sufferings which it is unable to understand. 
For the wider reaches of sympathy require that construc- 
tive activity of intelligence which places us by imagina- 
tion in situations which we have never personally tried, 
and enables us to construct out of the materials drawn 
from our own experience an ideal representation of the 
real experience of another. But this ideal construction 
is by no means always ready to command ; and hence 
with all men sympathy is quickest and most intense in 
the case of those sufferings which are precisely similar to 
their own, while it becomes more sluggish and less vivid 
in proportion as the circumstances of a sufferer differ 
from theirs. Probably the highest development of sym- 
pathy is that which runs out readily to meet emotional 
experiences which cannot at the time be understood, 
which are realised merely as inexplicable sorrows or joys. 
II. We now come to notice the less pleasing effect of 
an antipathetic nature, which is apt to be produced by 
the feelings of others. 

1. The pleasures of others are not ours ; and, though 
this consideration may be overwhelmed in a generous 
sympathy, yet it may also at times force into conscious- 
ness the contrast between their pleasurable and our 
pleasureless condition. If this contrast is not banished 
from thought, but brooded over, it may give rise to the 
various forms of malicious feeling that come under the 
description of envy and jealousy. 

2. On the other hand, the pains of others are capable 
of producing a twofold antipathetic effect. 

(#) The contrast between ourselves and the sufferer 



376 Psychology. 

may excite a feeling of self-gratulation, which may even 
rise to a coarse exultation, over our own freedom from 
his misfortune. One of the most common forms of this 
exultation is met with in the ungenerous reflection on a 
competitor's defeat, which often gives a zest to the 
triumphs of successful rivalry. 

(6) Again, the sight of suffering has often a varied 
pleasurable effect. It may relieve the langour of mono- 
tony, it may by its extraordinary nature startle with a 
pleasant surprise; while the contortions of the victim 
exhibit at times that character of oddity, which is 
the source of ludicrous effects. These emotional excite- 
ments are, in finer natures, generally supplanted by the 
vivid sympathetic realisation of the suffering expressed; 
but to coarse or morbid natures, that feed on such 
excitements, they bring a real, though horrid, pleasure. 
Savage life evidently derives one of its keenest zests from 
the torture of enemies; the scenes of the amphitheatre 
formed one of the most fascinating attractions to the 
populace of ancient Rome; a child bursts into boisterous 
fun over the wriggles of a mutilated insect ; and even the 
most refined nature betrays a faintly malicious disposition 
in the occasional pleasure of teasing a friend. 

It is evident from all these considerations, that a very 
large factor of our emotional life consists of the feelings 
excited by our fellow men. A very large proportion of 
that pleasurable excitement, without which human life 
would be intolerably dull, is derived from social inter- 
course. Accordingly, psychologists and moralists have 
long recognised the love of society as forming one of the 
most powerful feelings in the human mind. It is true, 
that in many minds, — perhaps in all minds at some 
time, — there is a love of solitude which seems to con- 
tradict the theory that the love of society is an inherent 



Feelings Originating in Association. 377 

craving of human nature. But society has its distractions, 
vexations, fatigues ; and to those who have known these 
solitude is a relief. Still the life of the recluse is essen- 
tially a sacrifice of manifold pleasures, and has therefore 
been a favourite form of ascetic self-denial in nearly all 
religions. Fellowship is one of the most imperious 
wants of man, and the power of this want is pathetically 
illustrated in numerous stories of solitary confinement or 
enforced seclusion. 

" Cast on the wildest of the Cyclad isles, 
Where never human foot had marked the shore, 
These ruffians left me ; yet believe me, Areas, 
Such is the rooted love we bear mankind, 
All ruffians as they were, I never heard 
A sound more dismal than their parting oars."* 

But our emotional relation to our fellow men consists 
not merely of this general delight in their companionship ; 
it assumes the form of specific affections for particular 
persons. It is usual, as already observed, to classify 
these in two great divisions as benevolent and malevolent; 
but such a division is apt, without explanation, to mis- 



* Thomson's Agamemnon. Hobbes is usually represented as 
maintaining that the natural state of men is one of unsocial hostility ; 
but this doctrine is often inadequately understood as implying that 
there is no basis for social existence in human nature. Hob 1 es 
does recognise certain natural impulses that attract men to friendly 
intercourse, and are more powerful than the " three causes of 
quarrel," namely, competition, diffidence, and glory. The only 
fault one can find with Hobbes' doctrine is the ludicrous incom- 
pleteness in his enumeration of man's social impulses. "The 
passions that incline men to peace," he says, "are fear of death, 
desire of such things as are necessary for commodious living, and a 
hope, by their industry, to enjoy them." {Leviathan ', Part i., 
Chapter 13). 



378 Psychology. 

represent the concrete realities of our emotional life. 
The feelings we entertain for others are generally of a 
very mingled, often of a vacillating, character ; and now 
it is the benevolent, now the malevolent, factors that 
prevail. Still, if we bear this complication in mind, the 
division affords a convenient guide for more detailed 
examination of the phenomena. Here of course emotion 
follows the usual course of its development. It starts 
with those feelings which depend on purely natural 
associations, and expands gradually to those which imply 
an intelligent choice. Consequently, it will be found 
that the affections, both benevolent and malevolent, may 
be subdivided into two main types, the natural and the 
rational j though here again it must be borne in mind, 
that our actual feelings seldom belong to either type 
exclusively.* 

(A) Benevolent affections are the various modes, in 
which we find pleasure in other persons. They are 
called benevolent obviously because they seek their 
gratification in the real or imagined wellbeing of their 
objects, though it is an important moral truth that, 
without rational guidance, these emotional impulses 
often produce the very opposite effects to those which 
they seek. 

In the very front of the benevolent affections we come 
upon one that may be regarded as forming the centre 
from which social life, and therefore also social feeling, 
radiate. Sexual love is an emotion sui ge?ieris i exhibiting 



* This distinction was first drawn by Bishop Butler, and has 
been generally adopted by subsequent writers, in reference to the 
malevolent affections. See Butler's Sermon on Resentment. The 
distinction, however, is obviously applicable, with equal propriety, 
to the benevolent affections. 



Feelings Originating in Association. 379 

the characteristics both of the natural and the rational 
types. Psychologists have too generally treated it in 
the spirit of Dr. Reid, who declares that " it is fitter to 
be sung than said," and accordingly leaves it "to those 
who have slept on the two-topped Parnassus."* It is 
true, that this emotion has formed a favourite material 
of poetry ; and the reason is probably to be found in 
the fact, that it is distinguished by an unusual 
combination of great intensity with great ideal power. 
Still this should render it only a more interesting 
subject of scientific analysis. The complete analysis 
of the emotion is, indeed, impossible. The truth is, 
that all the influences, by which one human being is 
capable of exciting amiable sentiment in another, are 
apt to be distilled into a finer essence of concentrated 
power in passing through the alembic of the sexual 
nature. Consequently this emotion may be modified 
into a thousand different forms according to- the 
character of the influences by which it has been 
generated; and therefore literary art, by its concrete 
treatment, is always able to describe the love of the 
sexes with more of the truth of nature than can be 
given to the abstractions of science. 

The peculiar character of this affection finds, of course, 
its natural basis in the difference of sexual constitution. 
A grossly inadequate view of this difference restricts it 
mainly to one set of organs j but as a true physiology 
and a true psychology look on no single organ, but 
rather on the whole organism, as being the organ of mind, 
so they compel us to regard the whole organism as an 
exponent of the difference of sex. The more thoroughly 
this view takes possession of the mind, the more 

* Reid's Works, p. 564, Hamilton's edition. 



3 So Psychology, 

thoroughly also does sexual feeling free itself from a 
mere animal appetite, and expand into that spiritual 
sentiment which forms at once one of the purest enjoy- 
ments and one of the purest moral influences of life. It 
has been maintained that this spiritualisation of the senti- 
ment has been the result of mediaeval chivalry; but this 
is a question which belongs rather to history than to 
psychology. Whatever may have been the history of 
this sentiment in the past, it must follow the general 
course of emotional evolution ; and any reversion to the 
sensuous restriction of the feeling, such as occasionally 
makes its appearance among the eccentricities of litera- 
ture, is not only an anachronism, but a solecism in art, 
as decided as if the poet were to seek the fittest material 
for the artistic description of a banquet in the animal 
gusto with which the viands are devoured. 

I. Among the other benevolent affections, those which 
are founded on relationships of nature come appropriately 
first under consideration. The characteristic of these is 
determined by the fact, that they arise from natural 
associations, not from combinations of intelligence. It is 
not any rational consideration that directs them to their 
objects; it is simply the extrinsic associations of space 
and time. They appear, therefore, as blind instincts, as 
unreasoning passions, that cling to their objects without 
any reflection upon the intrinsic character of these. 

i. Of such social instincts the type is to be found in 
what is called, by pre-eminence, natural affection ((TTopyrf), 
that is, affection between persons of the same kindred. 
The passionate intensity of this affection is mainly de- 
termined by the closeness of the natural relation, out of 
which it arises ; and consequently a mother's love has in 
all ages been regarded as among the most irresistible 
instincts of nature. Even within the sphere of the 



Feelings Originating in Association. 381 

family, as intelligence matures with age, natural affection 
is apt to be modified by rational considerations ; while, 
outside of that sphere, although the natural relation may 
still have a powerful influence on the affections, these 
receive their colour, in a very large measure, from the 
character of their objects. 

2. A natural affection is often developed towards a 
community, with which we are connected by natural 
causes. Wherever social organisation exists, this senti- 
ment ennobles human life ; it appears in the devotion of 
the savage to his tribe, in the attachment to a municipal 
home, in the patriotism with which men sacrifice them- 
selves for a fatherland. The last fruit of nature's growth 
in this direction is that philanthropy, — that "enthusiasm 
of humanity," — in which is attained an emotional reali- 
sation of the natural relationship of all mankind. 

II. But such a late outgrowth of natural affection can 
scarcely be distinguished from the other form of benevo- 
lence ; for this is but the extension to persons who are 
not akin to us of those affections which are naturally 
excited towards our own kindred.* This expansion of 
benevolent feeling, however, is but a mode of the general 
development of mind, which frees itself from the spatial 
and temporal associations of nature, rising into the inde- 
pendent combinations of thought. Affection tends thus 
to lose the passionate force of an unreflecting instinct, 
and to be distinguished by the deliberate calm of intelli- 
gent choice. This characteristic of the rational affections 
is expressively embodied in the Latin verb diligo, which 



* This seems indicated in the adjective kind, which, like the 
substantive, is from the Anglo-Saxon cen/ian, to beget (cf. kindle), 
cognate with the archaic Latin geno (giguo), and the Greek yevvdu. 



382 Psychology. 

is properly limited to them, and which is suggestive of 
the cognate intelligo and setigo.* 

Like the natural affections, the rational begin with 
attachments to individuals, and form the friendships of 
human life. But they, too, may extend to societies, that 
is, to societies which we enter by voluntary choice j and 
it is thus that the sentiment of espnt de corps is created. 

It is important to bear in mind, further, that when any 
rational affection for an individual or a society has 
existed some time it originates numerous associations 
which are apt to impart to it some of the passionate 
blindness of natural affection. This explains why the 
benevolent sentiment, which actuates the members of a 
society in common, may appear in relation to other 
societies, not only as a "generous rivalry," but also in the 
malevolent form of party-spirit or sectarianism. 

(B) We are thus brought to the second great division 
of the affections, — the malevolent The fundamental type 
of these is the emotional state named resentment. This 
term (originally rescntimenl) denotes etymologically a 
ftcling in return or again, and was formerly applied to the 
sentiment excited in return for favours as well as to that 
excited by injuries. Now the term is restricted to the 
latter feeling,! and it forms a very appropriate name for 

* The contrast of diligo with amo, which expresses rather the in- 
tensity of natural affection, is finely brought out in one of Cicero's 
letters: — "L. Clodius valde me diligit, vel, ut e/^art/ccirepoj' dicaui, 
valde meamat" {Ad Brutum, i., 1. Cf. Ad Fami Hares, ix., 14; 
xiii., 47). 

f A similar restriction may be traced in the history of the word 
retaliation (Trench's Study of Woids, pp. 54-5, nth ed.) Trench 
regards these restrictions of meaning as due to a degradation from 
the standard of sentiment in the good old times. They are evi- 
dently rather the result of that differentiation which characterises 
the growth of all language. 



Feelings Originating hi Association. 3S3 

the rebound of our emotional nature against injury. 
When this emotional reaction has fixed on its injurious 
cause, it becomes malevolent affection. 

It has long been, and continues still to be, a moot 
question among psychologists, whether there is any feel- 
ing of pure malevolence in the human mind.* The con- 
troversy is perhaps owing to a want of distinctness in 
the use of terms. What is meant by pure malevolence ? 
As commonly used, the word must be understood to 
mean either pain felt solely on account of another's 
pleasure, or delight in another's pain, considered simply 
as pain. Now, the explanation of sympathy given above 
implies that malevolence or antipathy in this sense would 
involve a subversion of the very constitution of the human 
mind. The sentiment of sympathy is merely the emotional 
side of that mental act, which on its intellectual side is 
an apprehension of the feelings of others. Consequently 
the conception of another's pain, purely as pain, is the 
revival of the pain in our own consciousness; and a 
delight in pain pure and simple is, therefore, out of the 
question.! The same remark applies to dissatisfaction 
with another's pleasure. At the same time it has been 
shown that the feelings of others are accompanied with 
adjuncts which afford a sufficient basis in our nature for 



* A recent debate on the question will be found in a paper by 
Mr. F. H. Bradley, in Mind for July, 1S83, with a reply by Dr. 
Bain in the following number. 

+ Even Hobbes, with all the repulsive egoism which generally 
characterises his psychology of the emotions, saw clearly this truth. 
After defining cruelty as "little sense of the calamity of others 
proceeding from security of men's own fortune," he adds : — "For, 
that any one should take pleasure in other men's harms, without 
other end of his own, I do not conceive it possible." {LeviatJian, 
Fart i., Chap. 6.) 



384 Psychology. 

malevolent antipathy ; so that practically the result is the 
same as if we were capable of being pleased with the pains, 
and pained with the pleasures of others. 

I. At its lowest stage nn volence, like benevolence, 
is excited by mere associations of nature ; it is a purely 
animal instinct, a blind passion, like natural affection. 
Its stimulating cause may, therefore, be any accidental 
harm — anything innocently offensive — such as even an 
inanimate object. Occasionally in civilized life this un- 
reasoning outburst of resentment may be observed, as 
when a man, in instinctive anger, kicks a stone against 
which he has inadvertently struck a tender toe. But it 
is in savage life, or in situations like a battle in which the 
restraints of civilisation are snapped asunder, that the in- 
stinct exhibits its most appalling power. Savages have 
been seen tearing an arrow from their lacerated flesh, 
and biting it in rage. Commodore Byron saw a native 
of Tierra del Fuego snatch up in fury his own child, 
who had accidentally dropped a basket of eggs, and dash 
the little fellow against the rocks with such violence that 
almost immediately afterwards he died.* 

II. But resentment loses the passionate force of a 
natural instinct, when intelligence is called into play. It 
then requires something more to rouse it than mere 
harm ; it requires an intentional injury, supposed, if not 
real. The injury need not, indeed, be inflicted directly 
on ourselves. If borne by another, it may by sympathy 
become an injury to us, and thus excite resentment. 
Such representative resentment is usually called indigna- 
tion. 

Resentment, whether instinctive or rational, may be 



* Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, p. 560. Other examples will be 
found in Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. i., pp. 259-60. 



Feelings Originating in Association. 385 

modified by numerous influences ; and thus it gives rise 
to the specific forms of malevolent affection, by which 
human life is disturbed. Like benevolence, it may 
attach itself to individuals or to communities. 

I. Among the malicious affections for individuals, envy 
and jealousy are the most common. Both originate in 
the same antipathetic emotion — the feeling of pain which 
is apt to be excited by contrasting the pleasures of others 
with our own want of their pleasures. 

1. Envy is usually described as a malevolent outgrowth 
of rivalry ; but it may arise in circumstances in which 
there is no explicit competition with others. Still it finds 
its most natural stimulant in competitions, especially when 
the object is one of merely relative value. When out- 
stripped by another in the pursuit of any such object, 
we are apt to feel hurt by his success ; and envy, in so 
far as it implies malevolence, is the resentful passion thus 
excited. This analysis is confirmed by the fact, that the 
word envy is often used without malevolent implications, 
but always with reference to a pleasure which we are not 
enjoying ourselves, as when one friend says to another, 
" I envy you your privileges," etc. 

In connection with this subject a distinction has been 
drawn between objects of pursuit which are of absolute 
value, such as intelligence or virtue, and those which are 
of relative value — which are of value to any one merely 
in comparison, or rather in contrast, with the degree in 
which they are possessed by others. The vulgar craving 
for wealth, fine clothing, splendid equipages, palatial 
residences, popular applause, is largely a mere wish to 
have something more or better than one's neighbours ; 
and there is often all the annoyance of baffled endeavour 
when the object has been gained by so many as to be no 
longer distinctive. Pursuits of the former class are 

A 2 



386 Psychology. 

spoken of as generous, because in them the successful 
enjoy their success only the more, the more that others 
partake of the same boon. It is in pursuits of the latter 
class that envy naturally arises.* 

2. Jealousy arises similarly under the influence of an 
affection which can be gratified only by its return. 
When another wins the love which we have expected, we 
feel hurt ; and our resentment of this injury constitutes 
jealousy. This passion may be felt in the case of any 
affection. Thus it may form a just resentment in the 
case of a parent, from whom a child's love has been with- 
drawn by some third person.! But jealousy is most 
common and most powerful in connection with sexual 
love, partly because of the intensity of this affection, 
partly because with it, more than with any, the success 
of one rival inevitably involves the defeat of another, and 
a defeat often entailing the keenest emotional anguish of 
which the human mind is susceptible. 

3. The malevolent affections of envy and jealousy are 
effects of failure in a competition ; but success often 
brings with it a kind of malice as well — the malicious 
pleasure of feeling our success enhanced by relief against 
the failure of a beaten rival. It is a startling fact, that 
not a few divines, in describing the joys of heaven, have 
attributed to the blessed the gratification of gazing into 



*This distinction is finely illustrated by Ferguson, Principles of 
Moral and Political Science, ii., I, 7. 

tXenophon draws a parallel between marital and paternal 
jealousy, in Cytop., iii., 1. Possibly it was in part to the paternal 
jealousy of Anytus, that Socrates owed his death. In the strong 
Eastern imagery of the Old Testament, God is described as jealous 
when His creatures give to other objects the love which He alone 
may claim. 






Feelings Originating in Association. 387 

the nether world, and glorying that they have escaped 
the sufferings of the damned. 

" Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?" 

II. Strangely enough, the malevolent passions, by 
which communities are separated, have their origin in 
the benevolent affections, by which each community is 
held together. The attachment to any society on the 
part of its different members is apt to produce a social 
selfishness, which may be as baneful in its effects as the 
narrower selfishness of individuals. It is thus that all 
sectional loves are perpetually generating sectional hatreds 
among men. The malicious enmities of political parties 
and of religious sects, " the feud of rich and poor," the 
hostile feelings of different nations, or even of different 
provinces and municipalities in the same nation, are in- 
stances of restricted hatreds growing out of restricted 
loves. As the relations of a man to the other sex may 
sometimes be peculiarly unfortunate, it is not unintellig- 
ible that misogyny should be an occasional phenomenon 
among human feelings. Even misanthropy is not inex- 
plicable. When a man has been signally unfortunate in 
the world, when his misfortunes have been caused by the 
villany of others, and solaced by no generous help, the 
emotional nature may receive such a twist, as to make it 
insensible to the pleasantness of human character, 
sensible only to its irritations, while the judgment may be 
so warped as to create a thousand imaginary causes of 
irritation, where there are none in reality to gratify the 
distorted sensibility. 

It seems necessary to add one word on revenge. 
What is understood by this term is an action rather than 
a feeling ; it is an action done under the impulse of 



388 Psychology. 

malevolent passion, not under the guidance of reason. 
The highest morality, therefore, reprobates revenge ; but 
it should be borne in mind that no action, done under 
the mere impulses of nature, is moral, and that any 
emotion, even benevolence, may lead to disastrous results, 
if allowed to control our conduct without rational direc- 
tion. 



Feelings Originating in Comparison. 389 



CHAPTER III, 



FEELINGS ORIGINATING IN COMPARISON. 

AS in the class of feelings, to which the previous 
chapter is devoted, the prominent fact is the 
association of pleasures and pains with their objects or 
causes, so in those, to which we now proceed, the other 
mental process, comparison, is the determining feature ; 
in other words, they are the emotions that arise from a 
comparison of their objects with other objects. As this 
involves the relation of objects in consciousness, the 
feelings in question have been called feelings of relativity. 
This name may appropriately embrace a larger range of 
emotions than it is sometimes used to denote; it is, in 
fact, applicable to all emotions that arise from an object 
being thought under any relation. All objects, indeed, 
must be known under relations ; but the relation of an 
object need not be the obtrusive phenomenon in 
consciousness. When it is so, it is calculated to excite 
emotions that vary in kind with the nature of the relation 
concerned, in degree with the intensity with which the 
relation absorbs the consciousness. 

The most easily intelligible relations are those of 
space and time. Spatial relations, by themselves, do 
not seem competent to excite emotion ; for it need 
scarcely be pointed out that the feelings excited by 



390 Psychology. 

movement involve the relation of time as well. The 
feeling, too, of vastness in extent, awakened by an 
immense landscape, or, still more, by the infinite spaces 
of the stars, derives its peculiar nature rather from the 
idea of sublimity than from that of space alone. 

Time enters as a subordinate factor into many 
of our emotions ; but we must limit ourselves to those, 
in which it is the distinctive element. Here meet us 
first the emotions already noticed, the feelings of move- 
ment, which have a spatial element in their primitive 
form, but throw that off in what has been called the 
" ideal movement " of music and speech. Here abstract 
rapidity and slowness produce pleasant or unpleasant 
effects, without reference to any change of place. 

Another class of feelings arising from temporal 
relations are those which have been called the prospec- 
tive and the retrospective. The prospect of pleasure is, 
on its emotional side, hope ; the prospect of pain is fear. 
But the uncertainty of the future often leaves the mind 
in that state of suspense, in which hope and fear 
strangely alternate or conflict with one another.* This 
state is undoubtedly one of the most exhausting to 
which our emotional nature is subject ; and possibly its 
painfulness may be due to the fact that, like discordant 
sounds and other feelings noticed before, it consists of a 
series of intermittent shocks, the intervals of which 
allow the sensibility to recover, and thus to undergo an 
excessive stimulation. 



* " Spemque metumque inter dubii " {Aeneid, i., 218), which 
Byron probably had in his eye when writing Donjttan, ii., 98 : — 

•' And then of these some part burst into tears ; 
And others, looking with a stupid stare, 
Could not yet separate their hopes from fears. " 



Feelings Originating in Comparison, 391 

On the other hand, the retrospect of past pleasures 
has long been considered as one of the largest and 
purest sources of human enjoyment. For, in accordance 
with laws of feeling which have been sufficiently explained 
already, it is easier to reproduce in consciousness a state 
of invigorating pleasure than a painful condition of 
injurious excitement j and therefore in general for all 

" the past doth win 

A glory from its being far, 
And orbs into the perfect star 
We saw not when we moved therein." 

There is, indeed, no distinctive name for the emotional 
state excited by the pleasures of memory ; but the pain- 
ful events of the past are the sources of the emotion 
familiarly known as regret. 

Both the prospective and retrospective feelings enter 
extensively as modifying influences into our emotional 
life. Our loves and hates, for example, are deeply 
tinged by hopes and fears ; while regret becomes aggra- 
vated into remorse when the painful event, on which we 
reflect, is thought as due to any moral fault of our own. 
This may explain why a psychologist, like Dr. Thomas 
Brown, should be able to classify a large proportion of 
our emotions under the heads of prospective and 
retrospective.* 'Tis true, it may be shown that in all 
the feelings thus distinguished a prospect or retrospect 
is implied; but in most this element is not the 
differentiating cause which gives its character to the 
feeling. 

But the universal relations of intelligence are, as we 



* Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 63 — 72 
inclusive. 



392 Psychology. 

have seen, those of identity and difference; and these 
give rise to a long series of varied emotions. Such 
emotions have not always separate names. Sometimes 
it is the pleasant, sometimes the unpleasant, side which 
is most prominent in human life, and which is accord- 
ingly distinguished by a familiar name. The most 
common of these emotions may be briefly described. 

I. Variety, as has already been noticed more than 
once, is essential to the continuance of consciousness 
itself. It is, therefore, essential to that stimulation of the 
sensibility which is required for pleasure. Consequently 
the prolonged repetition of the same mental state pro- 
duces the unpleasant feeling known as monotony, — a feel- 
ing which is capable of completely neutralising any form 
of enjoyment. 

II. We may enjoy a variety of impressions that are 
all familiar ; but even the repetition of such a variety 
produces at last a feeling akin to monotony, — the feeling 
of excessive familiarity or staleness. This is relieved only 
by the presentation of new objects to the mind. Novelty 
supplies the wonted stimulus to the sensibility, and is 
therefore a well-known source of agreeable effects. 

III. Familiarity implies the repetition of the same 
objects ; but a similar effect on the feelings may be pro- 
duced by the continued presentation of the same kind of 
objects. This is the disagreeableness which we associate 
with anything extremely commonplace. On the other 
hand, any object, which is not so much individually a 
novelty, which rather differs wholly from the kind of 
things to which we are accustomed, excites the emotion 
of wonder. This emotion is sometimes too intense to be 
pleasant. An excessive deviation from what we are 
used to expect may lead to disappointment, to painful 
astonishment. In extreme cases a marvel may even pro- 



Feelings Originating in Comparison. 393 

duce the effect of other excessively powerful stimulants ; 
it may deaden the sensibility : we may be astounded, 
dumbfounded, stupified.* But this feature of objects is, 
perhaps more frequently, the source of a pleasant surprise. 
Its pleasantness is illustrated by the power which the love 
of the marvellous exercises over the mind. Not only is 
the marvel-monger a favourite among vulgar minds ; the 
same passion often induces the scientific student to 
accept without hesitation ill-verified assertions regarding 
natural phenomena of a marvellous kind, while it also 
forms at times a misleading taste in the literature of history 
and fiction. 

IV. Resemblance and contrast are additional modifica- 
tions of identity and difference. As already explained, 
resemblance is identity in the midst of difference, while 
contrast is difference in the midst of identity. These re- 
lations are the source of various emotions, generally of 
an agreeable nature. A contrast may sometimes be too 
violent for pleasure. This is, in fact, the cause of pain- 
fulness in extreme astonishment or novelty. But more 
generally the flash of contrast, and probably always the 
flash of resemblance in consciousness is an agreeable 
stimulus. They both enter largely into the pleasures of 
scientific discovery and artistic invention. The develop- 
ment of science is a progressive insight into the resem- 
blances and contrasts that pervade nature, while agree- 
able devices of literary art, such as the common figures 
of speech, are founded on the emotional effects of simili- 
tude and antithesis. 



* It is worth observing that, at times, though less frequently, 
excessive variety is fatiguing, and excessive novelty (brandnewness) 
too striking; so that occasionally a moderate sameness or familiarity 
may form a pleasing relief to the mind. 



394 Psychology. 

V. When identity and difference are applied to time, 
we get the relations of periodicity and aperiodicity, of 
rhythm and irregularity of movement; for these relations 
imply respectively the recurrence of identical and of 
different times. Even in the feelings of sense the 
organism appears adapted to rhythmical stimulation. 
As already explained, it is this adaptation that makes 
tones agreeable in contrast with noises, rich in contrast 
with harsh qualities of tone, and harmonious combina- 
tions of tone in contrast with discords. It may also 
account in some measure for the disagreeableness of a 
flickering light, of false time in music, of a false quantity 
or metre in the recitation of poetry, of false steps in a 
dance, of an unsteady gait, of any movement by jerks, 
of an orator who speaks in spurts. It is not easy to say 
where, in such cases, sensuous feeling ends; but it is 
evident that in the higher feelings also rhythm mingles 
as an emotional agent. It enters especially, as an 
influential factor, into the enjoyment of poetical and 
musical form. 

VI. Another set of relations involving identity and 
difference are those of harmony and discord, understood 
in the figurative application of these terms. In their 
most general use these terms may be interpreted as im- 
plying an identity or difference of relations, as when two 
objects do or do not form complementary parts of one 
whole. Such identity and difference is, therefore, what 
we understand by the various expressions, order and 
disorder, proportion and disproportion, symmetry and 
asymmetry, congruity and incongruity. 

The relation, denoted by the former term in each of 
these sets of expressions, is a very extensive source of 
the more refined enjoyments of human life. It enters 
largely into the varied forms of aesthetic gratification 



Feelings Originating in Comparison. 395 

which we receive from nature and from all the arts, 
while the vast cosmic order gives in cultured minds a 
tone to the religious sentiment. The other relation is of 
interest perhaps chiefly because it forms the basis of the 
ludicrous. 

The sentiment of the ridiculous has given rise to 
almost as great diversity of opinion as the feeling of 
beauty. Various qualities in objects have been main- 
tained to be the sources of ridicule. Incongruity, mean- 
ness, degradation accompanied by the feeling of power 
or self-exaltation, have all found their advocates. Against 
each of these qualities instances have been cited, where, 
not ridicule, but some other emotion, — pity, anger, 
scorn, &c. — has been excited.* Such criticisms over- 
look the fact that there is a subjective as well as an ob- 
jective condition of feeling. The emotional effect, there- 
fore, of any objective quality cannot be told without 
knowing how the mind is related to that quality at the 
time. Thus incongruity will excite ridicule, if it is not 
counteracted by the mental condition of the moment. 
But an incongruous object may often be viewed in other 
aspects ; and consequently it may produce different feel- 
ings in different minds, or even in the same mind at dif- 
ferent times. Take, for example, the odd contortions of 
pain, or the comical behaviour of a drunkard. When 
viewed exclusively on their droll side, these phenomena 
will assuredly excite the sentiment of the ridiculous ; but 
that side may be entirely obliterated in minds of deeper 
insight or more sympathetic tenderness. On going over 
ridiculous objects no more prominent characteristic than 
incongruity can be found universally present. Other 
qualities, such as degradation, with the relief of self-exal- 

* See, for example, Bain's The Emotions and the Will, pp. 248. 



396 Psychology. 

tation, may be frequently, perhaps commonly, met with ; 
but even if they could be shown to be uniformly there, 
in the production of ridicule they are altogether subordi- 
nate to the relation expressed by such terms as dispro- 
portion, incongruity, oddity, drollness. 

VII. The feelings of freedom and restraint have also 
been enumerated among those that are based on com- 
parison ; for it is only by relation to each other that these 
conditions have any meaning in consciousness. Were 
it not for the fact that human life provides all men with 
an occasional experience of the irksomeness of restraint, 
the glory of freedom would never be realised ; and with- 
out a taste of freedom it is proverbial that the slave will 
"hug his chains." 

VIII. Emulation, that is, the emotional excitement 
developed in competition, is obviously due to a compari- 
son between the subject of the feeling and his rival or 
rivals. This feeling undergoes, of course, the same kind 
of expansion to which mental evolution in general is sub- 
ject, and therefore it manifests itself in a great variety of 
directions. It also enters extensively as a factor into 
many of the complex emotions, inasmuch as the activi- 
ties, by which our sensibility is excited, are very often 
pursuits in which we are, implicitly or explicitly, com- 
peting with our fellowmen. 



Intellectual Feelings, 397 



CHAPTER IV. 



INTELLECTUAL FEELINGS. 

OUR pleasures and pains are the concomitants of 
the varied activities of life. Now, our activities 
may be regarded as either cognitional or volitional, as 
intellectual or practical ; and there are some feelings 
whose chief determining cause is an activity of the one 
or of the other kind. In the present chapter we shall 
examine the intellectual, and in the concluding chapter 
the practical emotions. 

The acquisition of knowledge is the source of many 
and varied enjoyments. There is scarcely one of the 
pleasurable feelings described in the previous chapter 
which may not be at times experienced in intellectual 
pursuits. The exertion of intellect, when not overstrained, 
is in itself an agreeable activity ; while self-esteem, the 
esteem of others, the pleasure of power, and other feel- 
ings may enter as subsidiary factors of the whole enjoy- 
ment. It is not, therefore, difficult to explain the love of 
knowledge — the feeling commonly treated by psycholo- 
gists under the name of curiosity. During the earlier 
years of life, until the familiar facts of the world are 
mastered, curiosity forms a strong and useful impulse. 
In later life it is only among men of some education 
that it forms a useful and refining power. In vulgar 
minds it allies itself with the more petty instincts, and 



398 Psychology. 

even with the malicious passions of human nature, 
degenerating into a prurient craving after the knowledge 
of facts too trivial or too pernicious to be worth know- 
ing. 

It thus appears that the use of the intellect in acquir- 
ing knowledge is a source of numerous pleasures. 
Generally, however, the emotional factor of intellectual 
work is subordinate, the consciousness being absorbed 
in the prima] end of the work, the object to be known. 
This end may be purely speculative — the acquisition of 
knowledge for its own sake ; or it may be practical — the 
acquisition of knowledge for the purpose of directing us 
to some ulterior result. But in cither case it is the object 
sought that engrosses the conscious effort. Sometimes, 
however, the end of intellectual activity is neither specu- 
lative nor practical, but simply the delight in the activity 
itself, not excluding, of course, any collateral pleasures 
which it may involve ; and then arises the emotional state 
known as aesthetic feeling. 

The nature of this feeling has been already indicated 
in the chapter on Idealisation.* It was there shown 
that intellectual activity, to be aesthetic, must be of the 
nature of play. But play is an exercise which seeks no 
end beyond its own pleasure ; and therefore aesthetic en- 
joyment is found in the intellectual activity itself, out of 
which it arises, not in any ulterior end. It follows from 
this, that aesthetic gratifications are distinct from selfish 
pleasures, on the one hand, and from moral interests on 
the other. 

I. They are distinct from all selfish enjoyments — all 
enjoyments connected w T ith the struggle for existence. 
Hence, 

•Book, ii., Part ii., Chapter iv. 



Intellectual Feelings. 399 

1. Some sensations, such as the gustative and the ali- 
mentary, are wholly excluded from the aesthetic field. In 
fact, sensation as such — mere sensuous excitement — is, 
strictly speaking, not yet aesthetic. The higher sensa- 
tions furnish natural materials for the aesthetic conscious- 
ness ; but they yieM a purely aesthetic pleasure only when 
they have entered into suggestive associations and intel- 
lectual combinations. Accordingly it was shown that 
the different sensations are adapted to artistic purposes 
in proportion to their distinct representability. ^Esthetic 
material, being thus found rather in ideal representations 
than in actual sensations, can be enjoyed by many ; it is 
not consumed in being enjoyed by one. The enjoyment 
is, therefore, essentially unselfish, disinterested. The 
contrast between selfish and aesthetic gratifications is ex- 
treme, when w r e compare the pleasure of merely viewing 
a tastefully decorated banquet with the pleasure of eating 
the viands. The unselfishness of ce.^thetic emotion, 
therefore, constitutes also its refinement ; for refinement, 
as previously explained, is the power of freeing con- 
sciousness from mere sensuous states, and occupying it 
with mental products. 

2. But even ideal representations, to be aesthetic, 
must be absolutely disinterested. Beautiful objects may 
at times naturally excite meaner passions like envy, 
jealousy or vanity. A bitter drop of envy or jealousy is 
often sufficient to neutralise all the sweetness of aesthetic 
feeling; an artistic production, that is known to be a 
vulgar parade of wealth, may fail to achieve the aesthetic 
effect that might have been expected from its intrinsic 
merit. If a work of art implies wealth in its possessor, 
it is not this fact which fits it for yielding aesthetic grati- 
fication. In the same way, although the useful may be 
beautiful, it is so, not because it is useful, but because of 



400 Psychology. 

the intellectual pleasure afforded by contemplating the 
manner in which it is useful. 

II. But aesthetic feeling is essentially distinct from all 
moral interests, as it is from the selfish passions of the 
struggle for existence. Moral activity supposes an ulte- 
rior end j in fact, it supposes an implicit reference to the 
ultimate end of our being. Consequently it stands re- 
lated to art in the same way as the production of utilities. 
Art may be moral as it may be useful, and its aesthetic 
effect may be enhanced by its morality or by its utility. 
Nay, the artist, being a moral agent, must have some 
sort of moral aim in his artistic activity as in other spheres 
of His conduct. Moreover, the object of art being the 
production of an intellectual pleasure, the artist dare not 
overlook the value of the moral sentiments, as any flag- 
rant offence to these would inevitably defeat his aesthetic 
aim. Still the aesthetic gratification, which a work of art 
yields, cannot be derived from the fact that it has a moral 
purpose. This fact would excite the sentiment of moral 
approbation. The aesthetic pleasure is derived from con- 
templating the manner in which the moral facts of life 
are combined for the production of an artistic effect. 

The pure form of aesthetic pleasure is that expressed 
by the term beauty, and pure aesthetic pain is ugliness. 
But, like other emotions, these admit of numerous modi- 
fications according to the subsidiary influences which 
may happen to predominate in the artistic material by 
which the aesthetic effect is produced. In works on 
psychology and aesthetics it is common to give promin- 
ence to the feelings of sublimity, in which aesthetic enjoy- 
ment is just passing over into the disturbing emotions of 
wonder and awe and power. The picturesque and the 
ludicrous are also familiar objects of aesthetic pleasure. 
In the former, the pure aesthetic feeling is modified by 



Intellectual Feelings. 401 

an excess of variety ; in the latter, by an excess of in- 
congruity. In strictness, however, aesthetic feeling is 
much more variously modified than it is commonly re- 
presented to be. The weird, for example, in which the 
mysterious, the " uncanny," the supernatural plays a 
prominent part, has, indeed, a certain affinity with the 
sublime in the common feeling of awe, but is destitute 
of its other essential factors.* A distinct place ought 
also to be given to the tragic, in which the painful emo- 
tions, especially terror and pity, form the chief aesthetic 
material, and also to the dramatic, in which aesthetic 
effects are based mainly on plot-interest. 

But the complete analysis of these various aesthetic 
effects would carry us into the details of the science of 
aesthetics. 



* The feeling of the weird is expressed in the Scottish adjective 
eery. 



402 Psychology, 



CHAPTER V. 



FEELINGS OF ACTION. 

IN the general evolution of mental life volition, that 
is, action in the strictest sense of the term, is 
called into play ; and the action, as action, gives rise to 
various feelings, pleasurable and painful. 

There is a pleasure in mere action, — a pleasure which, 
at an earlier period of life, displays itself mainly in the 
love of muscular sports, and during later years gives a 
zest to the varied industrial, intellectual, and moral 
activities of men. But all action, strictly so called, im- 
plies an end ; and this circumstance constitutes it a more 
fruitful source of emotion. 

I. The attainment of any end gives us the pleasure of 
feeling that it is within our power, as failure to reach it 
excites the mortification of powerlessness, of baffled en- 
deavour. In this we have the source of ambition, the 
love of power, which obviously forms an extensive and 
varied influence in human life. If in younger years, and 
in many men to the very last, it shows itself only in the 
pleasure of producing results of bodily strength or skill, 
it expands under advancing culture into the aspiration 
after that power which high intelligence wields over 
nature and men. It has been pointed out that this 
emotion enters as an ingredient into the pleasure of 
virtue, inasmuch as the virtuous life is a realisation of 



Feelings of Action, 403 

complete power over self, not to speak of the influence 
it may exert over others. But the love of power seems 
also to add force to the cruel side of human nature ; 
nothing yields such a vivid consciousness of our power 
over another as his subjection to our torture.* 

II. But without evoking the definite feeling of power, 
the presence of an end may kindle a more or less eager 
desire for its attainment. This eagerness takes sometimes 
an egoistic, sometimes an altruistic, direction. 1. In its 
egoistic form it originates the pleasure of pursuit, the 
pleasure of approximating to the end of an action, to the 
ideal of a life. 2. In its altruistic form this emotion 
arises from contemplating the activity of others, and the 
development of its results. We thus obtain that large 
element of literary gratification, the pleasure 01 plot- 
interest. 

III. As each action supposes an end, so each 
subordinate end supposes some supreme end, to which 
it is merely a means. All the immediate ends 01 human 
actions, therefore, point to a chief end of man, a summum 
bonum of his life. The pleasures connected with the 
pursuit and attainment of this end, the pains connected 
with the failure to reach it, — these enter as prominent 
factors into the moral sentiments. 



* Stewart has given a specially interesting illustration 0/ the 
numerous directions of the love 01' power in his Philosophy of ihe 
Active and Moral Powers, Book i., Chap, ii., § 4, 



Volitions, 405 



PART III. 



VOLITIONS. 

VOLITIONS are actions consciously directed to an 
end ; and the problem of psychology is to explain 
the process by which we acquire control over our ac- 
tions so as to make them subserve the ends we have in 
view, instead of being aimless. In the treatment of this 
problem we shall discuss (1) the nature of volition, (2) 
the motive power of the feelings, (3) the extension of 
voluntary control over muscles, feelings, and thoughts, 
(4) freedom of volition. 



4°6 Psychology. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE GENERAL NATURE OF VOLITION. 

HERE, as in cognition and feeling, the rudimentary 
material of the mental life is to be found in 
sensation,— here considered as giving, not information 
or pleasure and pain, but impulse to action. There are 
indeed impulses outside of conscious sensation. There 
are possibly, as a favourite doctrine of Professor Bain 
holds, spontaneous discharges of surplus muscular 
energy.* Certainly stimuli transmitted along afferent 
nerves are often reflected along efferent nerves without 
exciting consciousness. These spontaneous and reflex 
muscular movements are moreover not without value in 
the development of voluntary movements ; but they are 
by no means so valuable as those experiences, in which 
movement follows, though involuntarily, upon a conscious 
sensation. Thus we close the eyes, or turn the head 
away, from a dazzling light. We shrink or scream or 
groan under an excessive pain. The hand plays 
tenderly with any smooth soft body which it touches. 
We are constantly shifting to relieve the uneasiness of a 
posture maintained too long. In a thousand ways the 



* The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 5973 ; The Emotions and the 
Will, pp. 297-308. 



The General Nature of Volition. 407 

feeling of pleasure, perhaps more frequently the feeling 
of pain, discharges itself in excitements of motor nerve. 
The movements, thus involuntarily stimulated by sensa- 
tion, are observed very strikingly in the changing 
positions of the sleeper, when he is disturbed. It is not 
possible always to distinguish such movements from 
strictly reflex actions ; but the distinction is real. 

When an action is thus involuntarily performed, 
whether by a spontaneous or reflex or sensational stimulus, 
it may be the cause, directly or indirectly, of pleasure or 
pain. In fact, most of our pleasures and pains imply 
some action on our part. We speak of objects being the 
causes of our feelings; but objects must be brought 
into the proper relation to our organism to excite its 
sensibility. Thus a beautiful scene must be looked at ; 
a sapid body must be put into the mouth, an odour 
must be sniffed, before the appropriate feelings can be 
experienced. The action therefore comes to 'be 
associated in consciousness with the pleasure or pain it 
produces ; and, as already explained,* it is thus that 
likings and dislikes are aroused. The association of 
action and feeling makes them mutually suggestive. 
The feeling, therefore, whether actually felt or merely 
remembered, will suggest the action, by which it is pro- 
duced ; but an action, — a muscular movement,— cannot 
be represented in consciousness without a faint thrill in 
the muscular region which would be stirred if the 
movement were actually made. This thrill of repre- 
senting an action in connection with a pleasure to be 
reached or a pain to be avoided by it, — this is that 
conscious state of desire, craving, longing, yearning, 



* See Chap. ii. of the previous Tart. 



40S Psychology, 

which has been well named "the small beginnings of 
action."* 

This mental state finds its most vivid and familiar 
illustration in the earliest form in which it shows itself in 
human life— our animal appetites. The term, appetite, 
when used in its most restricted sense, is applied to those 
lie cravings which arise from the recurring wants of 
animal nature. Of these it is common to distinguish 
two kinds — one as being natural and original, the other 
as artificial and acquired. The latter arc simply particu- 
lar habits imposed on the nervous system by the peculiar 
indulgences of individuals. Such are the cravings for 
alcohol, tobacco, opium, tea, flesh, spices, and other 
stimulants or narcotics. Appetites of this sort are of 
course not universal impulses of the human mind, but 
are mere accidents of individual life. On the other 
hand, the natural or original appetites have their source 
in the intrinsic wants of our animal constitution, and are 
therefore common to all men. The most obstrusive of 
these in daily consciousness are those most closely con- 
nected with the struggle for individual existence, hunger 
and thirst. But, in addition to these, the sexual organic 
cravings, the craving for sleep, the cravings for activity 
and rest, and perhaps some other bodily desires of a 
more obscure character, are also to be included among 
natural appetites. These earliest and simplest forms of 
desire remain throughout life the types of all the more 
complex longings of the mind. In common language 
the terms hunger and thirst, in particular, are extensively 
applied to describe even the highest aspirations of life. 

For it scarcely needs observing, that cravings may 
nave their origin not merely in the pleasures and pains 

* Hobbes' Leviathan, p. 39, Molesworth's ed. 



The General Nature of Volition. 409 

of sense. The impulsive power of a sensation depends 
on its power of giving pleasure and pain ; but this power 
is not confined to feeling at the stage of mere sensation ; 
it belongs equally to the stage of pure emotion. The 
impulsive action of feeling, however, even at this higher 
stage, does not constitute volition. Numberless actions 
in the daily life of all men are the thoughtless, involun- 
tary promptings of emotion. A sudden ecstasy of joy, 
an unexpected excess of sorrow, a flash of hope or 
despair, an overwhelming panic, a furious outburst of 
anger, — such emotions will diffuse themselves irresistibly 
over various muscular regions, and determine all sorts .of 
aimless actions. But a volition is not aimless or thought- 
less ; it implies a thought of the end to be attained by 
the action. How is this developed ? 

A volition, we have seen, is not merely an action un- 
reflectively prompted, suggested by a previous associa- 
tion with some pleasure it produces. It implies a 
consciousness of this association, a conscious compari- 
son of action and pleasure with a cognition of their 
relation as means and end. It is only when we thus 
reflect on the end to be attained by an action, that the 
action becomes voluntary. This fact is apt to be lost 
sight of, as it is obscured by an ambiguity in the use of 
the word motive. This term is sometimes employed to 
denote an impulse of sensibility, by which we are moved 
to act without reflection ; and such action implies no 
intelligent control. But in a higher application the term 
is identified with intention or intelligent purpose ; that 
is to say, a motive, in this sense, is an object set before 
consciousness as the end to be reached by the perform- 
ance of an action. It is only actions directed by this 
higher sort of motives that are voluntary. A volition is 
an act of an intelligent being acting intelligently. 



4io Psychology. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE MOTIVE POWER OF THE FEELINGS. 

FROM the previous chapter it appears that, in ordei 
to volition, there must be a representation of the 
end to be attained. We have thus a test of the voli- 
tional quality of different feelings ; and it is found to be 
identical with that quality on which the intellectual and 
emotional life also depends, — that combination ofassocia- 
bility and comparability which has been briefly described 
before as distinct representability. It is true that in the 
mental picture of ends it is often not so much the future 
feelings themselves that are represented, but rather the 
external circumstances in which these are expected. Nor 
is it difficult to understand why this should be the case. 
Not only are external circumstances, implying usually 
visual images, capable of being represented with greater 
vividness than pleasures and pains; but it is by picturing 
in imagination the external stimulants of our pleasures 
and pains that these are realised in anticipation. Still, 
in order to endow our feelings with volitional power, 
they must be represented to the mind ; and therefore 
this power of our feelings demands some consideration 
here. 

To understand this power in all its bearings, the feel- 
ings must be viewed both on their sensible side, that is, 



The Motive Power of the Feelings. 41 1 

as sources of pleasure and pain, and on their intellectual 
side, that is, as sources of knowledge. 

I. In the former aspect they possess two somewhat 
contrasted properties, intensity and durability. 

1. The intensity of a feeling, as we have already seen, 
is the degree in which it absorbs the consciousness. 
Now, the intensity of a feeling may be said to be the 
measure of its motive power while it lasts. This law 
implies two facts : — (a) that the power of a feeling to 
move us is naturally in proportion to its intensity, but (b) 
only while it lasts. 

(a) The former statement is evidenced by the manner 
in which our moral judgment is modified by finding that 
an action has or has not been done under the influence 
of intense feeling. This modification is observed not 
only in the judgments of individuals and particular social 
circles ; it has influenced even civilised jurisprudence 
Though law properly concerns itself only with external 
acts, it has become common, in modern legislation, to 
mitigate t'ie punishment of crimes perpetrated under 
powerful temptations, such as a theft of bread to escape 
starvation, or a homicide prompted by a sudden over- 
powering passion. 

(b) But this statement is subject to the important 
qualification, that the intensity of a passion measures its 
motive power only while it lasts. After it has died away, 
it can be of influence as a motive only by being repre- 
sented ; and therefore its motive power depends then on 
its distinct representability. Indeed, as soon as reflec- 
tion has had time to work, passion begins to wane ; and 
in general, therefore, it may be said, that our feelings are 
powerful stimulants of action in proportion to their 
intensity only while they operate as unreflecting motives. 
A.s motives in the higher sense of the term, as objects of 



4*2 Psychology, 

intelligent purpose, they imply the power of being dis- 
tinctly represented. 

2. But before proceeding to this intellectual quality of 
the feelings, there is another quality, which they possess 
in their sensible aspect, demanding consideration. The 
durability of a feeling is its capacity of continuing in 
consciousness without relief. The relation of durability 
to intensity may be sufficiently expressed by saying that 
the two arc in an inverse proportion to each other, if 
this mathematical formula is understood not to imply the 
exact measurements of quantity, which are characteristic 
of mathematical science. 

This relation has impressed itself deeply on the com- 
mon consciousness of men, and impressed itself as a fact 
of supreme importance in its bearing on the sum of 
human happiness. For, as already explained in connec- 
tion with the theory of pleasure and pain, excessive or 
prolonged intensity, passing the limit of healthy action, 
destroys sensibility ; so that a period is soon put to the 
duration of intense feelings. " The breath of flowers," 
says Lord Bacon, " is far sweeter in the air, where it 
comes and goes like the warbling of music, than in the 
hand."* And the principle here implied holds good, 
not only of odours, but of all kinds of feeling. The 
pleasures which contribute most to our general welfare 
are those which come and go, or are of calmer tone and 
enjoyed in moderation. Fortunately, persistent intensity 
destroys sensibility to pain as well as pleasure. The 
worst agonies, therefore, as the brutal malice of the 
savage and the refined malice of the inquisitor equally 
know, are those pains which die away and return upon 
us afresh ; or they are those calm griefs which settle 

* Essay Of Gardens. 



The Motive Power of the Feelings. 413 

down into a calm despair. " Dolor in longinquitate 
levis, in gravitate brevis solet esse ; ut ejus magnitudinem 
celeritas, diuturnitatem allevatio consoletur."* It is for 
this reason that we refuse to trust in the continuance of 
intense feelings : we prefer a sober friendship to any 
" gushing " affection ; and we look with certainty to the 
early decay of all ecstasies, sensual, intellectual, moral, 
and religious alike. 

" His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, 
For violent fires soon burn out themselves ;"+ 

and there is a wise psychology in the old proverb, "Love 
me little and love me long." Even in the loftiest senti- 
ment an excess of fervour, equally with any excess in 
mere sensation, is apt to abolish consciousness. 

" In such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God 
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired." 

But the lesson, impressed on the mind by the relation 
of durability to intensity of feeling, is affected by an im- 
portant qualification. We have already seen that variety 
is an essential condition of consciousness in general, of 
pleasurable consciousness in particular. Nothing neu- 
tralises all kinds of enjoyment more completely than 
monotony. An uniform calm, therefore, even of enjoy- 
ment, tends to degenerate into insipidity. To avoid 
this result it is usual to vary the even tenor of the emo- 
tional life by occasional seasons of heightened enjoy- 
ment. Though plain food forms the staple gratification 



* Cicero, De Finibus, i. 12. 

t Richard the Second, Act ii., Scene I. Compare the passage 
from Romeo and Juliet, quoted above, p. 326. 



414 Psychology. 

of life, there is a need for feasts at times ; and mis forms 
the reason of banquets, holidays, hightides. For one 
moment of intense enjoyment may, in many instances, 
be infinitely preferable to a feeble prolongation of the 
same feeling. 

'• Come what sorrow can, 
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy 
That one short minute gives me in her sight."* 

It would appear also as if in the anguish of a second 
might be summed up the misery of years. In the history 
of some kinds of suffering man is not without occasional 
experience of a moment of unspeakable horror, regarding 
which it may be truly said, that 

" In that instant o'er his soul 
Winters of memory seemed to roll, 
And gather in that drop of time 
A life of pain, an age of crime. "t 

This fact, however, bears upon the feelings considered 
not merely as sources of pleasure and pain, but also as 
impulses to action. There is a tide in the emotions of 
men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to high achieve- 
ments. Enthusiasm, that is, an unusual intensity of 
elevating sentiment, is necessary to raise men above a 
humdrum existence. And therefore, for the sake of 
energetic activity, men dare to risk the emotional storms 

* Romeo and Juliet, Act ii., Scene 6. The idea is felicitously ex« 
pressed in a German students' drinking-song : — 

" Nippet nicht, wenn Bacchus' Quelle fliesset, 
Aengstlich an des vollen Bechers Rand J 
Wer das Leben tropfenweis' geniesset, 
Hat des Lebens Deutung nie erkannt." 

f Eyron's Giaour, 



The Motive Power of the Feelings, 415 

that are apt to arise out of inspiring enthusiasms, rather 
than be content with the dull ease of a placid career. 

" Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, 
To all the sensual world proclaim, 
One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name."* 

For the same reason man finds more interest in a brief 
period of the great historical nations with all their stir 
and strife than can ever be felt in the uneventful records 
of those peoples that have left no impress on the 
development of humanity. 

" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay ! " 

Accordingly, to render possible a more exalted course of 
action, men adopt various means for cultivating to higher 
intensity the sentiments by which such a course is 
inspired. This is the happy effect that we seek in the 
companionship of sympathetic minds ; and the great 
religious teachers of all ages are never weary of proclaim- 
ing that acts of religion have no significance or value 
except in cherishing the state of feeling which gives a 
nobler tone to life. Of course, there is a danger that the 
passionate susceptibility, which leads to splendid deeds, 
may be misdirected to meaner ends. Still, without its 
enthusiasms, life would scarce be worth living. To the 
general life of man they impart the charm of romance, 
and in the moral life particularly they are indispensable 
to heroic virtue. We can therefore understand why, in 
the more earnest movements of religious history, modera- 
tion has often been stigmatised, not indeed as implying 
positive vice, but as tending to cool the ardour of senti- 

* Scott, Old Mortality, Chapter xxxviii. 



416 Psychology. 

ment necessary to reach the ideal at which these move 
ments aim. 

II. But it is not on their sensible side that the feelings 
are of chief interest in the development of the mental 
life. We have already seen that cognition and emotion 

owe their complicated developments to the intellectual 
qualities, the associability and comparability, — of our 

•ions; and it is in virtue of these qualities, which 
have been summarily described as forming distinct rcpre- 
sentability, that the feelings contribute to the development 
of volition. Considered merely as sensible phenomena, 
the feelings may form unrellective impulses to action ; 
but it is only by being distinctly representable that they 
can form intelligent ends. This aspect of the feelings, 
therefore, alters altogether the estimate of their motive 
power which we should form from their sensible qualities. 
It values a feeling not only while it lasts, but when it is 
afterwards revived in memory or imagination to form an 
object of intelligent reflection. It appears that the 
distinct representability of feelings may be generally 
described as in direct proportion to their durability, and 
therefore in inverse proportion to their intensity. From 
this it follows on the one hand that the calmer feelings 
are not only more durable, but more distinctly revivable 
in idea. Both of these facts are of great practical import, 
i . We may well at times be struck with awe at the fact 
that feelings, which for the moment overpower by their 
intensity all other impulses, cannot be afterwards repre- 
sented with any vividness. The reason of this fact has 
been already pointed out in the general principle, that a 
feeling, even if naturally pleasurable, passes, by its excess, 
the limit of health, and becomes destructive. The fact 
finds its illustration in all departments of our emotional 
life. There are many sensations, like those of sickness, 



The Motive Poiver of the Feelings. 4T7 

which absolutely control our conduct while we are under 
their power, yet leave but the faintest traces in imagina- 
tion and memory. Perhaps, however, the most startling 
instance of the fact under consideration is to be found 
in the rapid access of repentance after excess, after the 
inordinate indulgence of any passion. Owing to the 
inverse ratio between the intensity and the durability 
of our feelings, the power of the criminal impulse 
collapses with appalling suddenness ; and in consequence 
of the inverse ratio of intensity to representability, 
being unable to quicken the dead passion into the 
after-life of memory, the guilty wretch stands aghast at 
his conduct, and cannot now realise what ever induced 
him to act as he has done. The famous scene, with 
which the second act of Macbeth opens, will long retain 
its terrible charm over the mind from the truthfulness 
with which it pictures this dread revulsion of feeling. 
It may be observed that a more pleasing illustration of 
the same revulsion is found in an emotional state resem- 
bling the nature of shame, that sometimes follows upon 
actions done under the influence of a high enthusiasm. 

2. But the counterpart of this fact is also familiar in 
human life. The sources, from which we draw the 
materials for happy reflection and for pleasing construc- 
tions of the fancy in after years, are not, as a rule, the 
violent excitements of our sensibility, but those feelings 
which are of a calm nature, and which also endure 
commonly for a long time. This fact, however, is of 
interest, not only as pointing to the perennial sources 
of human happiness ; it noints equally to the kind of 
feelings which must form the objects of intelligent 
volition. The man, whose conduct is dictated by the 
most intense passion of the moment, leads a life that is 
destitute of any determinate character. To attain con- 

C 2 



4i3 



Psychology. 



sistency of character the life must be guided by an ideal 
plan; and an ideal plan of life supposes, not merely the 
impulses that proceed from the variable moods of the 
sensibility, but motives that can be retained permanently 
in idea. Such motives, U«wrvtfL, *ttt 5e found only in 
connection with feelings that are distinctly representable, 



Voluntary Control over Muscles, etc. 419 



CHAPTER III. 



THE EXTENSION OF VOLUNTARY CON- 
TROL OVER MUSCLES, FEELINGS, AND 
THOUGHTS. 

THE most obvious and therefore the most intelli- 
gible sphere of volition is muscular activity. 
The nature of the volitional control of muscle has 
been partially explained in the opening Chapter of this 
Part. It was there shown that muscular activity is first 
stimulated by spontaneous or reflex or sensational im- 
pulses. The muscular activity, originated in any of 
these ways, excites pleasure or pain ; and the pleasant 
or painful feeling excited becomes accordingly associated 
in consciousness with the activity which is its cause. 
When the feeling is afterwards represented, it recalls 
the cause ; and we are accordingly moved to reproduce 
the cause in order to the reproduction of the effect. 

But to guard against mistake, and prepare the way for 
further developments of volition, it is necessary to con- 
sider the nature of the feelings connected with the 
activity of the muscles. Muscular sensation is merely 
a peculiar mode of feeling which, though distinguished 
in quality from other feelings, is not a consciousness of 
the muscles, by whose action it is excited. Apart from 
anatomical study, muscular sensation can no more 
reveal the structure, or even the existence, of muscles 



420 Psychology. 

than a sound can tell the form of the cochlea, or a 
colour can reveal the rods and cones of the retina. The 
volition, therefore, which issues in muscular contraction, 
is not directed consciously towards the muscles contracted. 
I will, for example, to write certain characters on the 
paper before me with the pen which I hold in my hand. 
I am unable, without consulting an anatomical work, to 
tell precisely what muscles must be called into play in 
guiding the pen, But I have written the same charac- 
ters a countless number of times before. After scores of 
somewhat unsuccessful efforts in school-days I have hit 
upon the precise muscular contraction required. That 
precise contraction is the source of an equally definite 
muscular sensation ; and it is through this sensation 
alone that the required contraction becomes associated 
with the facts of my conscious life, and comes within the 
sphere of conscious volition. Accordingly when a 
familiar act is represented as an object of volition, I am 
able, through the muscular sensibility, to hit upon the 
muscular contraction necessary to the accomplishment 
of the act. If the act is still unfamiliar, — if it is one the 
performance of which still requires to be made into a 
habit or dexterity, — it is through the muscular sensibility 
that the acquisition is directed. From general use of 
the muscles I must of course be acquainted roughly 
with the limits within which the required muscular 
exertion lies. 1 can, therefore, hit more or less nearly 
on the precise contractions. It is here that the vast 
differences appear between individuals in regard to the 
sensibility and pliability of muscle. Some show a quick 
expertness, that seems to want no tuition, in finding the 
exact stroke of muscle demanded. For such nature has 
formed a basis for proceeding at once to those higher 
refinements, by which they may excel all ordinary 



Voluntary Control over Muscles^ etc. 427 

teachers, and attain the achievements of genius. Others, 
again, less favoured by nature, never succeed, even after 
laborious repetitions, in overcoming the clumsy awkward- 
ness of learners. 

It is important, then, to bear in mind, that, even in 
voluntary control of the muscles, volition is directed 
immediately, not to the muscles themselves, but to the 
sensations excited by muscular action. In passing, 
therefore, to voluntary control of the feelings, there is 
not such a wide gap in the evolution of will as might at 
first be supposed. In controlling the muscles themselves 
the consciousness is directed to a certain mode of 
feeling, — a mode of feeling, indeed, connected with the 
muscular mechanism by which we modify the external 
world, but a mode of feeling all the same. Consequently 
the transition, in this expansion of voluntary power is, 
in strictness, not so much from control of muscle to 
control of feeling as from controlling one mode of feeling 
to the control of another. 

In fact there is, in many, if not in most, of the 
voluntary acts which control the feelings, a close affinity 
with those which control muscular movement. We have 
seen in the Introduction to the previous Part of this 
Book, that the feelings are in many instances associated 
with specific muscular movements as their expression. 
This association, it was further observed, is so close, as 
to constitute a certain dependence of the feelings on 
their expression j so that, by producing an expressive 
movement, the associated feeling may be in some 
measure reinstated. The dependence, indicated in this 
fact, is, however, manifested in other ways. The expres- 
sion of an emotion is connected with the emotion by 
some natural law or laws, in whatever manner the 
connection may have originated j and consequently the 



422 Psychology. 

tendency of an emotion, when unresisted, is to find vent 
in its natural i in. But this tendency may be 

resisted, at least in those cases in which expression is 
connected with the voluntary muscles. We cannot 
indeed arrest the relaxation of the intestinal mi 
often broi lent fear ; we cannot check the 

quickened heat of the heart which emotional excitement 

re the interrupted rhythm of 
the circulation which, under the influence of various 

feelin] lour come and go on the lace. 

But the laugh and the frown, the start of surprise, and 

the numerous :m the familiar expres- 

sions of feeling,— these are all under conscious COntroL 

Now, the repression of these movements necessarily 

interferes with the natural play, and deadens the vivacity, 
motion. 
In fact the play of emotion, — its indulgence, — consists 
in the influence which it c: ■• vet the conduct of 

life; and this influence is exhibited, not only in the 
general human expressions of emotion, but also in par- 
ticular acts in which emotion may be indulged at any 
moment. The real control of emotion consists in the 
repression of all its overt manifestations. The emotional 
life feeds upon its overt indulgencies, and without them 
cannot be sustained. Such indulgencies are often private, 
like the secret fondling of objects associated with any 
affection, or retired acts of devotion. There is nothing 
more frequently enjoined in treatises on practical religion 
than the necessity of such private acts for the cultivation 
of religious feeling. This injunction of religious teachers 
is based on an universal principle with regard to the 
culture of the emotions, — the principle that any emo- 
tional excitement may be controlled by keeping in check 
its active manifestations, and that emotions may be 



Voluntary Control over Muscles, etc. 423 

starved out of existence by being habitually refused the 
indulgence they crave in directing external conduct. 

To what extent such emotional repression should be 
carried, is a problem of ethics ; and the great divisions 
of ethical speculation might be described as separating 
on the problem. For while an extreme Epicureanism 
seeks the chief good of humanity in some form of 
emotional excitement, and while an extreme Stoicism, 
finding in such excitement the source of all evil, enjoins 
the cultivation of an emotional apathy; more moderate 
ethical theories hold up the ideal of a life, in whicli 
rational conduct is warmed and beautified by rational 
feeling. This is not the place to dwell on these theories 
further than to point out that, amid all their differences, 
they agree in recognising the psychological fact, that the 
emotions can be voluntarily allowed to determine, or 
prevented from determining, the character of any human 
life. 

• It is this check upon their external manifestations that 
is commonly understood by the control of the feelings in 
our daily life. But it remains a question, whether such 
an account exhausts all that can be said of this control. 
It may be true that feeling is, not only in general, but 
always, bound up with some muscular manifestation ; yet 
it is a very simple task of abstraction to separate in 
thought the feeling from its expression. It is quite con- 
ceivable, therefore, that though the feelings are usually 
repressed by restraining their outward manifestations, yet 
it is possible to direct conscious volition to the feelings 
themselves without reference to their manifestations. 
Whethei this is actually the case or not, is a question 
which brings us to the ultimate problem of the will. In 
the discussion of this problem it will be found that some 
psychologists refuse to recognise any sphere of voluntary 






4 2 4 Psychology. 

control beyond the muscular system j and to such the 
utmost that ran he meant by volition is the conscious 
anticipation of a muscular movement that is about to be 
felt by us. Whether this is a complete account of the 
limits of the will, must be discussed in the sequel. Mean- 
while, is preparatory to that discussion, it is important to 
notice another extension of voluntary control. 

As there is a certain control exercised over the feelings, 
so we can also, in a certain sense, control the thoughts. 
The explanation of this act has been prepared in discus- 
sing f idary Laws of Suggestion * and the nature 
of attention. f It was then shown that, while the pheno- 
mena before consciousness at any moment are multifa- 
rious, the consciousness is unequally distributed over 
them. While the majority of these phenomena attract 
comparatively little notice, on some, perhaps only on one, 
the consciousness may he concentrated either by an in- 
voluntary impulse of feeling or by voluntary effort. This 
concentration of consciousness controls our thought!, not 
only for the moment, but also for the moments immedi- 
ately following. For it makes the thoughts, on which 
the consciousness is concentrated, more powerfully sug- 
gestive than the rest, and consequently determines the 
line in which the current of thought will flow. It is this 
straining, this attention of the mind, that renders possible 
voluntary recollection, study, consecutive thinking. Let 
us look at the nature of the act more closely. 

In some instances, at least, the act obviously resembles 
that of controlling the feelings by restraint of their out- 
ward manifestations. When the object of thought is a 
body actually present to sense, then attention to it in- 



• Book i., Part ii., Chapter i., § 2. 
«■ Book ii., Part i., Chapter ii., § l. 



Voluntary Control over Muscles, etc. 425 

volves some muscular act, — the fixing of the eyes, the 
breathless listening, the manipulation of a surface, the 
sniff of effluvia, or some similar action. Even when the 
object is one of abstract thought, the concentration of 
consciousness upon it implies, as already explained.* 
such a tension of our limited powers as to arrest activity 
in other directions. Unless a voluntary restraint is 
exercised over the restless muscular movement by which 
bodily life is in health usually characterised, the con- 
sciousness would be so distracted by the innumerable 
changing phenomena brought within its ken that atten- 
tion would be impossible. The enforced quiet of the 
muscular organism produces a state of monotony in re- 
gard to outward impressions, and deadens thereby their 
power of stimulation. But this quiet is, of course, en- 
forced by the voluntary control of the muscles ; and it 
cannot, therefore, be doubted that attention, at least in 
its more definite forms, frequently, — it may be usually or 
even always, — implies muscular restraint. But here, as 
in regard to the voluntary control of the feelings, the 
question arises, whether in recognising this muscular 
restraint we have disclosed the whole nature of the voli- 
tions which direct the course of our thoughts. This 
question cannot be properly discussed except by entering 
upon the problem reserved for the concluding chapter. 



426 Psychology. 



CHATTER IV. 



FREEDOM OF VOLITION. 

THE problem of this chapter is essentially identical 
with those ultimate problems regarding the general 
nature of knowledge, which were discussed in the sixth 
chapter of the first Part of this Book ; and, therefore, 
little remains to be done but to explain the bearing upon 
this problem of the principles involved in the previous 
discussion. 

At the outset it may be worth while to recall the 
definition of voluntary action in the first chapter of this 
Part. It was there shown that many so-called actions 
are due to unreflecting impulses, and that the term 
motive is very often used for impulses of this kind. On 
the other hand, this term is also frequently applied to the 
conscious purpose, the end which we have in view when 
we act. It is only actions of the latter class that are 
voluntary. A volition is therefore an act of a person 
who knows what he is doing, and who, in knowing what 
he does, knows the end which his action is adapted to 
attain. Now, it is not maintained that human actions 
are generally of this voluntary sort. On the contrary, it 
may be admitted that the majority of actions, — all the 
actions which make up the routine of daily life, — are of 
the mechanical type, even though they may be the 
result of habits voluntarily formed, and may therefore 



Freedom of Volition. 427 

continue subject to voluntary restraint. Man is encir- 
cled by the systems of natural law, limited by them in his 
original constitution, rewarded or punished by them in 
his repeated actions. So far his activity is like any other 
natural product ; but the question remains, whether it 
does not essentially imply something more. 

The question, then, in reference to the freedom of 
volition is confined to those acts which alone are en- 
titled to be called volitions, — those in which the agent 
consciously seeks to reach a certain end. Accordingly, 
it leaves out of account, and we may throw aside as a 
meaningless fiction, that sort of freedom which has been 
called the " liberty of indifference," that is, a power to 
act free from the influence of any motive whatever. 
Whether such a freedom can be claimed for man or not, 
it is not worth claiming ; for a motiveless act cannot be 
an intelligent act, since it implies no intelligence of the 
end which the act is designed to accomplish. On the 
freedom of the will, then, as thus defined, there are two 
theories, or sets of theories. 

I. One holds that, whatever distinction may be drawn 
between the actions, to which the term volition is 
restricted, and those that are done unreflectingly, there 
is no difference in so far as the law of causality is con- 
cerned. According to this law, every phenomenon is 
absolutely determined by some antecedent phenomenon 
or phenomena ; and consequently every action of man 
receives its definite character from the immediately 
antecedent circumstances in which it was done, it being 
understood that antecedent circumstances comprehend 
the condition of the agent himself as well as the con- 
dition of his environment. The manifold agencies in 
the physical world excite their multitudinous tremors in 
the nervous system : these are followed by appropriate 



428 



Psych 



states of consciousness feelings, cognitions, desires ; 
and the phenomena, which we call volitions, are merely 
further links in this chain. Every volition, therefore, 
On this theory, is re simply as an event in time, 

wholly determined, like any other event, by events 
preceding. 

This has been commonly called, in former times, the 

id its sir N essitarians. 

tes of the theory, however, generally 

object to the term Ne - implying compulsion 

without consent, whereas the theory regards the consent 

of the agent as one of the conditions of" a voluntary 

action. On this account Determinism has been sug- 

K and is ; rally adopted, as an appropriate 

nation of the theory. 

Though a certain form of Determinism has often been 
maintained by theologians of the Augustinian and Calvin- 
istic schools, yet the doctrine tends at the present day to 
ally itself with that general theory of man's origin, which 
Is him as, in mind and body alike, merely the last 
evolution of organic nature on our planet. According to 
this view man's consciousness is simply the product of 
the forces in his environment acting on his complicated 
sensibility, and of that sensibility reacting on the environ- 
ment. His consciousness, therefore, stands related to 
other phenomena precisely as these are related to each 
other, each being acted upon by the rest, and reacting 
upon them, so that all are absolutely determined by this 
reciprocity of action. On this view man's self is not a 
real unity, forming by its unifying power, out of an unin- 
telligible multiplicity of sensations, an intelligible cosmos; 
it is a mere name for a factitious aggregate of associated 
mental states. The only actual self is the sum of feelings 
i>f which we are conscious at any moment; and the actual 



Freedom of Volition, 429 

self, therefore, differs with the variation of our feelings. 
Such a self evidently offers no intelligible source of any 
activity that is not absolutely determined by natural 
causation. 

II. The opposite theory, maintaining that volition is 
in its essential character free from the determinations of 
natural law, is spoken of as the doctrine of Liberty, or of 
the Freedom of the Will. Its supporters are sometimes 
called Libertarians. This doctrine contends, in one 
form or another, that there is an essential difference 
between human volitions and other events, and that 
their character is not to be interpreted, like that of other 
events, solely by referring to the antecedent circumstances 
in which they were done. This theory tends to ally 
itself at the present day with that Transcendental 
Idealism, which refuses to accept Empirical Evolutionism 
as a complete solution of the problem of man's nature. 

The doctrine of Liberty insists on the essential 
distinction between the reality, the unity, of the self and 
that of objects. The notselves, that make up the 
objective world, have no real point of unity, no self- 
hood ; so that from themselves nothing can originate. 
But the self is a real self, a real centre of unity, from 
which radiate all the unifying functions of intelligence 
that form into intelligible order the world of sense. The 
self, therefore, stands related to the notselves of the 
objective world, not simply as these are related to each 
other ; it is contradistinguished from the whole of them 
in a way, in which each is not contradistinguished from 
the others, as the intelligent interpreter without which 
they could form no intelligible system. This system is 
formed of parts which are construed as holding relations 
of reciprocal causality ; but the intelligence, that con- 
strues the system, is not simply one of the parts, whose 



430 Psychology. 

action is absolutely determined by the action of the 
rest. 

As \vc have seen in the previous discussion on self- 
consciousness, it is this distinction of self from the whole 
universe of notselves, tnat alone renders intelligible the 
cognition of that universe. It is also the independence 
of self on the universe of notselves, that alone renders 
intelligible its voluntary action on that universe. For a 
volition is not an act, .o which I am impelled by the 
forces of external nat ire beating upon my sensitive 
nature ; it is an act, ii which I consciously set before 
myself an end, and determine myself towards its attain- 
ment. The very nature of volition, therefore, would be 
contradicted by a description of it in terms which brought 
it under tin ry of causality. 

This freedom of the self from determination by the 
world of objects is the f i alone explains, without 

explaining away, the consciousness, that there is within 
us a centre of conscious activity which is, in the last 
resort, impregnable by any assaults of mere force. You 
may apply to my organism superior forces of organic or 
.mic bodies, and compel it to act as you wish. You 
may employ all the sensible inducements at your disposal 
in order to bend me to your purpose; you may tempt 
me with the most bewitching delights of sense, or scare 
me with its most frightful agonies. You may even, by 
ingenuity of torture, so shatter my nervous system as to 
prevent me from carrying out into the world of sense the 
deliberate resolutions of myself. But there is one thing 
which mere force, — force separated from reason, — cannot 
do ; it cannot compel me. 



Conclusion. 43 1 



CHAPTER V, 



CONCLUSION. 

THE preceding discussions, brief though they are in 
comparison with those of more elaborate treatises, 
may yet be felt to be incomplete without a summary of 
their general results. Psychology being the science 
of man's mental life, its problems present not only the 
interest of scientific questions in general, but the 
higher interest of those questions which bear specially 
upon man's nature, his origin and his destiny. These 
questions, in their essential significance, cannot be ap- 
proached except through the path of man's mental life : 
it is this that at once creates their perplexity, and opens 
the way to their solution. Moreover, the meutal life of 
man, involving the problems of his essential nature and 
origin and destiny, involves also the problems of the 
nature and origin and destiny of all things. For, if these 
problems can be solved at all, the solution can be reached 
only by the nature of things being revealed to the human 
mind, and that can be revealed only under the conditions 
to which psychology shows that the human mind is sub- 
ject; while, even if the essential nature of things be 
unknowable, it can be shown to be so only by an analy- 
sis of the conditions of knowledge, such as is furnished 
by the psychologist. 



43 2 Psychology, 

The mental life of man, as we have seen at the outset, 
is distinguished from other phenomena by the conscious- 
eess wiili which it is accompanied. It is Dot necessary 
to discuss whether the so-called mental life of the lower 
animals is likewise characterized by this accompaniment, 
whether any of these can ever consciously think within 
itself, u /"feel pleased or pained, / know this object as 

distinct from that, / will direct my action so as to attain 

tins or that end." Such consciousness forms the essentia] 

feature of man's mental lite, and forms also the fact which 
requires explanation in any theory of man's nature and 

gin and destiny. For it is obvious that any such theory 

IS Called U> explain mainly, how man came to conscious 
activity, and what is the function which such an activity 

implies in the universe. Now, as we have seen more 
than once, the fact of consciousness presents, on the face 
ol it. features which prevent us from treating it simply 

one among the manifold phenomena of nature, as if it 
held the same relation to these which they hold to one 
another. This distinction is more or less explicitly 
acknowledged by all. Even if conscious phenomena are 
subjected to the same methods of scientific treatment as 
the phenomena of nature in general, they are yet recog- 
nized ;,s forming a group by themselves, differentiated 
by their distinctive characteristic from all phenomena 
which are not accompanied by consciousness. 

The relation, therefore, in which the phenomena of 
consciousness stand to other phenomena — or, briefly, the 
connection of mind and matter, of soul and body — has 
long been regarded as invested with a peculiar mystery, 
a difficulty of being scientifically comprehended, other 
and greater than any difficulty which science encounters 
in comprehending the mutual relations of material phe- 
nomena. Accordingly, the history of philosophy reveals 



Conclusion. 433 

various theories on the relation of mind and matter ; and 
these theories are in fact, merely particular phases of the 
views held on the fundamental problems of human knowl- 
edge. 

One theory may be said to cut, rather than to untie, 
the knot of the problem. It maintains that there is in 
reality no connection whatever between the phenomena 
of mental life and those of the material world. The two 
classes of phenomena are conceived as running in parallel 
currents, in which certain phenomena of one class are 
found to be uniformly contemporaneous with certain 
phenomena of the other; but this uniform co-existence 
of phenomena in the two classes implies nothing more 
than concurrence in time. Thus the mind is never really 
influenced by the movements of the material world, nor 
are these movements ever really modified by the efforts 
of the mind. Sometimes, indeed, a physical movement, 
such as a nervous vibration, is followed by a feeling, 
while a conscious volition is followed by a bodily move- 
ment. But in such cases the one phenomenon is merely 
a concomitant of the other : neither can be said to 
exert upon the other any real influence. 

This theory, though propounded in earlier times, found 
its fullest development in the speculations of Descartes 
and of his school, especially of Geulincx. It has also 
been associated with various theological doctrines, which 
it is unnecessary here to discuss. At the present day 
the theory finds a more or less explicit support from 
some psychologists, who look upon all the overt acts of 
life in general, and of human life in particular, as being 
scientifically comprehensible without ascribing to con- 
sciousness any real influence in determining their course. 
The purport of this theory may, perhaps, be best under- 
stood by taking any familiar act, and trying to imagine 



434 Psychol 

how it would require to be conceived. Suppose, then, a 
buinan being, in whose organism a morbid process begina 
11 *■ P* 008 " ! > boI in the nerve-tissues themselvi 
win attack them l.y and by, and send a thrill to the 
1 "- ; ""- Beactingfrom this excitement, the brain sends a 
"- fl1 " motoMier the limbs of the 

1,:lt,, ' m '" "**<>*« ; ""1 causes him to move towards 
t,,r "»<*«*» of bis medical adviser. There the roeal 
1 ^epatientare excited to activity, and produce 
nbrationi ..." the air, which strike apon the car of the 
,lo,;,,r - wh * » W in his turn to move the organs of his 
sd probably also to move his fingers forthepur- 

P '" "rttogoui a prescription. The prescription is 

then taken to an apothecary, and made up, and ultimately 
a ; 1 ' ni,l,M " ,v ' 1 t(> the Ment Now, according to the 
"■""jo! I' all this would go on precisely as it 

arIU:ll, . v ^PPens, even if there were do feeling or 
thought either in the patient or in his medical adviser j 
t,,:j: , the bodily actions are entirely independent 

of the conscious mental actions, and entirely unaffected 
by them. I- i a rarely obvious, however, that the efficient 
i of actions is the conscious suffering 
of the patient : apart from bis painful thoughts and feel- 
there would be no motive to action at all. 
But this theory may be tested in another way. How 
is the origin of pleasure and pain to be explained from 
the standpoint of modern evolutionism? It must be 
supposed that conscious feelings of pleasure and pain, 
when first experienced, gave to the animal that experi- 
enced them a certain advantage over others. If they 
had been of no advantage, they would soon have vanished 
from the universe as mere lusus nature that fulfil no 
function. But the fact is, that pleasure and pain have 
remained through innumerable generations amon* the 



Conclusion. 435 

most prominent phenomena of life, and their continuance 
implies that they fulfil some function, that they are of 
some advantage to living beings. But they can give this 
advantage only if they have some causal efficiency, and 
therefore the conscious feelings of sentient beings must 
have some influence upon their life. 

Another theory might likewise be described as simply 
a rude cleaving of the knot, inasmuch as it maintains 
that there is no fundamental difference between con- 
sciousness and other phenomena, so that it must be 
explained by the same scientific concepts which interpret 
the others. On this theory conscious activities are 
simply phenomena of nature, produced by processes of 
natural causation like the phenomena of the material 
world. This is the psychological and philosophical system 
known as materialism ; that is to say, it maintains that 
all reality is, in the last analysis, reducible to matter and 
motion of matter. This system is commonly interpreted 
at the present day by an hypothesis about the constitution 
of matter which conceives it as being composed of exceed- 
ingly minute and ultimately indivisible particles — atoms. 
According to this hypothesis, every real event in the 
universe must be interpreted as a movement of atoms, 
either separately or in those larger or smaller masses into 
which they are combined ; and the task of science is com- 
pleted when it succeeds in making such an interpretation. 

Now, this is not the place to inquire whether the phe- 
nomena of the material world itself can be interpreted 
intelligibly on such an hypothesis. To the philosophical 
physicist or chemist or biologist it will appear a very 
obvious question, whether the facts, which he observes, 
are intelligibly or completely explained as implying 
merely that some atoms or molecules or masses of matter 
have changed or are changing their relative positions in 



43^ Psychology, 

space.* Such questions, though indirectly, are not neces- 
sarily forced on the psychologist For him the problem 
is, whether, even if the facts of material nature imply 
nothing bat matter and its motion, the facts of man's 

Conscious life admit of being explained in the same terms. 

On this point fortunately little more is required than 
thai the student Bhould clearly present to his thought the 
meaning of the question raised. Almost every attribute, 
that can be predicted of a thing as existing and moving 
in space, is unthinkable in application to the thoughts 
and feelings of a self-conscious being. Even granted 

that the impact of external agencies upon our organism, 

and the activities which they set up in the nervous system, 
thrilling into the most secret chambers of the brain, may 
all be explained as movements; yet, whenever yon pass 
from the last thrill in the molecules of the brain to the 
activities of conscious life, you enter upon a region where 
the familiar landmarks of space and matter, of atoms and 
motion, are no longer to he discerned, and therefore 
intelligence must seek direction from a totally different 
order of concepts. Accordingly, in the common thoughts 
of men, as interpreted in their ordinary language, and in 
the more exact thought of science and philosophy, there 
has always been recognized a distinction between the 
internal life of consciousness and the external world, 
which renders it impossible to represent the former as 
reducible to the same order of facts with the latter. 
" The passage from the physics of the brain to the corres- 
ponding facts of consciousness is," says Professor Tyn- 
dall,f " unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and 

* In the literature of this question a prominent place must be given to 
the able work of Mr. J. B. Stallo, "The Concepts and Theories of Modem 
Physics," in the International Scientific Series. 

t Address on the Scope and Limit of Scientific Materialism in "Frag- 
ments of Science," p. 131. 



Conclusion. 437 

a definite molecular action of the brain occur simultane- 
ously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor 
apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would 
enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning from the one 
to the other. They appear together, but we do not know 
why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strength- 
ened and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the 
very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of follow- 
ing all their motions, all their groupings, all their elec- 
trical discharges, if such there be ; and were we intimately 
acquainted with the corresponding thoughts and feelings, 
we should be as far as ever from the solution of the 
problem, 'How are these physical processes connected 
with the facts of consciousness ? ' The chasm between 
the two classes of phenomena would still remain intel- 
lectually impassable." In these words Dr. Tyndall has 
simply expressed the conviction of every competent 
thinker who has considered the subject. 

It is thus acknowledged that it is impossible to find 
any intelligible interpretation of mind in terms of matter. 
On the other hand, is there any impossibility in the 
opposite procedure which takes mind with its concepts as 
the starting-point, and interprets the material world by 
these? Such an interpretation would simply mean the 
discovery of a reason in every material thing, such a 
comprehension of material realities as would imply that 
they are all harmonious parts of one rational system. 
Now, it must be obvious, on a moment's reflection, that 
such a comprehension or interpretation of the material 
world is nothing but the avowed object of all science. 
As already stated,* scientific effort would be at once 
paralyzed by the suspicion, that there is any factor of 
knowledge which, in the last analysis, may be a surd 
* Above, p. 229. 



43$ Psychol 

quantity, incapable of being brought into intelligible 
relation with the general Bystem of thought 

The obvioas inference from all this is, thai the uni- 
v « : interpreted, is the constrnction of 

:i " ! '1 [ntelli lo evade this conclusion, 

n,,v ometimes adopted, which, while 

implied in a peculation, has become 

perfectly explicit in o prominent school of thought at the 
!"■« • According to this conception, the univt 

>wn to us, indeed, is an intelligible system ; 

bat, as such, it is merely ■ construction of human in- 

tell what it is, apart from the construction we 

put upon it. never can be known. Man, therefore, is 

. r to bopeh is ignorance regarding the real 

if the universein which he lives: what he takes 

i with an independent reality are merely fictions 

of his own mind : 

" Beiumqae Iguarus imagine gaudet." 
Now. in order to determine whether our knowledge 
reveals to us realities, or merely appearances about which 
•re can never know what they represent, two questions 
require to be considered: W<- must, first of all, decide 
what is meant by knowing anything; and, in the second 
place, we must define tin- object about which we wish to 

find out whether it can be known or not. 

With regard to the first point, it is obvious that, when 
anything is known, it must stand in such a relation to 
the person knowing it as to admit of its being known by 
him. Knowledge, in fact, may be said to be a relation 
between a knower and a thing known. It is evident, 
therefore, that, if a thing is to be known at all, it can 
only be by forming one term of the relation that constL 
tutes knowledge. To try to know an object that cannot 
be brought into relation with any intelligent being 



Conclusion. 439 

would be the nonsensical game of trying to find a relative 
without any relations, — a parent that never had a child, 
an antecedent that has no consequent, or, to use one of 
Ferrier's homely vivid images, a stick with only one end. 
It may be added, that, when a thing is known, it must 
be brought into relation with other known things ; that 
is to say, as explained fully in the previous pages, a 
thing becomes an object of knowledge only by being 
identified with, and differentiated from, other objects. 
These facts may be summed up in the statement, that a 
thing cannot be known if it is out of relation to all other 
things ; and it is these facts which constitute the real 
meaning of the often misunderstood doctrine of the 
Relativity of Knowledge. Even, therefore, if there 
could he anything which is out of relation to everything 
else, for us and for all intelligent beings it would be 
nothing, since it could never by any possibility be known. 
Having determined what is meant by knowing, we 
must now, in the second place, define what the object is, 
about which it is disputed whether it can be known or 
not. "Pis evident that, if you wish to approach without 
prejudice the question, whether a certain object is know- 
able, you must not at the outset define it in terms which 
preclude the possibility of its being known. But this is 
what we find perpetually done in connection with the 
subject we are at present discussing. If a thing is to be 
really known, we are told it must be known as it is in 
itself; and that is explained to mean, as it is when taken 
away from relation to everything else. Now, even if 
there could be any reality in the universe, existing out of 
relation to every other, it must be a reality about which 
the human mind can well afford to be indifferent. For 
no intelligence, indeed, could such a reality possess the 
slightest interest. To be of interest to us, an object 



440 Psychology, 

most 1>f capable oi influencing ua for good or evil) and 
it cannot be of any inflaence without coining into some 
relation with us. A reality, therefore, which is defined 
to be out oi relation toeverj other, has no bearing oo 
tin- present question. For such a reality is already 
defined in terms which render il unknowable \ and accord- 
the definition implies merely that, it" there ia sny- 
thing which i- out of relation with everything else, it 
cannot be brought into relation with ;i knower, ami can- 
not therefore !"■ know u, 

lint the definition i* really meaningless* So far as we 
can attach any meaning to tin- language, a thing is what 
it ii in itself by virtue of it> relations to other things ; it- 
rial nature, it- real force, counts in its reciprocity 
« > i action with everything else; and, apart from such 
reciprocal relations, it is nothing at all. These relations, 
of course, being practically infinite, can never lie exhaus- 
tively known. All our knowledge is therefore partial; 
bat it is valid a- fur a- it i^oes. It is a knowledge of 
reality, because it is a knowledge of those relations — 
identities and differences — which constitute the 

real nature of all things. 



INDEX. 



Abercrombie, Dr., 187, 254, 255, 
263, 266, 270, 279, 280 

Addison, 129 

Affection, 370 

Afferent nerves, 20 

Age, 10 

Alimentary sensations, 35, 40, 68 

Allen, G., 59, 132, 133, 230, 252, 
316 

Anaesthesia, 252 

Anaxagoras, 43 

Anthropology, 12 

Antipathy, 375 

Anytus, 386 

Apparitions, 248 

Apprehension, Simple, 21 1 

A priori and a posteriori, 284 

Aristotle, 34, 315, 322 

Architecture, 237 

Art, 234 

Articulate sounds, 155 

Artman and Hall, 151 

Astrology, 8 

Attic salt, 128 

Augustinianism, 428 

Bacon, Lord, 35, 81, 412 

Bailey's Festus, 330 

Bain, Professor, 143, 2S8, 300 338, 

372, 383, 395. 406 
Barbaros, 158 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 144 
Beauty, 234 
Bell, Sir Charles, 335 
Berkeley, 146, 166 
Biography, 6 
Blacklock, 187 
Blushing, 367 
Boerhaave, 34 



Brace, Julia, 135 

Bradley, 395 

Braid, 349 

Brewster, 177 

Bridgman, L., 49, 50, 141, 145, 206 

7 
Brillat-Savarin, 129, 131 
Brown, Dr. T., 391 
Burke. Edmund, 343, 346 
Burns, 132 
Butler, Bishop, 378 
Byron, Commodore, 384 
Byron, Lord, 330, 390, 414 

Calvinism, 428 

Carlyle, 365 

Carpenter, Dr., 35, 145, 280 

Cerebro-spinal system, 19 

Chalmers, Dr., 277 

Cheselden's patient, 165, 168, 169. 

187, 352, 353. 354, 355 
Cicero, 81, 382, 413 
Clang-tint, 54 
Coleridge, 265 
Colloids, 34 
Colours, 57 

Common sense, 121, 286 
Composition, 240 
Concept, 211 
Conceptualism, 202 
Consciousness, 2 
Consonants, 155 
Contractility, 66 
Contrast, 86, 393 
Cowper, 329 
Crusades, 82 
Crystalloids, 34 
Cumberland,- S. C, 144 
Curiosity, 397 



44* 



Index. 



lies, 315 

JISi 3-3 
Darwi 

I 'cm lip of, 357 

t, 45 

I I . ism, 428 

1 

ition, 1 1 

! . ! i . i ! . :■> 70 

Drmiimo;. . ;o 

1 riastes, 351 
, 401 

20 
1 tricily, 

l 271 

I • : D, 31a 

Empirical, 
Emulation, 396 
I 
Epicureanism, 423 

1 iinis 41 

1 tnann, 116 
Euripides, 351 

!cnce, 285 

Facial sense, 141 

Fallacies, 248 

Familiarity, 99 

Fatigue, 72, 325 

Fear, 390 

Fechner, 28 

Ferguson, Adam, 81, 317, 3S6. 

Fine arts, 234 

Flaubert, 253 

Flavour, 35 

Fontenelle. 322 

Franz's patient, 43, 166, 168, 169 

Galen, 34 
Geiger, 59 
Genius, II 



loo, 

'94. 
286, 



Giants, 134 

59 

I . 330 

I ith, ^7 

1 i, 43, iso 

si meals, 128 
day, 333 
' . Dr., 262 

252 
Gurney, 2S1 

Habit, 10, 103-7 

Mil. '',4.280 

Hall<-, 

-'48 
Hamilton, sir W , 34, 04, 78 

Il6, 121, 122, I46, 192^ 
223, 227, 23I, 233, 

30$ 

Harmony, 160-1 
N ■ ; . I Caspar, 135 
Hecker, 352 

336 
Hetmholtz, 51, 60 61, 156, 168, 

174, 181, 250 
Herbart 

y, 7 
Hobbes, 219. 377, 408 

Holmes, O. W., 13S, 266, 273 
Hope, 390 

. Dr., 136, 206 
Humboldt, 134 
Hume, 305, 322 
Huxley, 12, 253 
Hyperaesthesia, 251 

Idea, 227 
Ideal, 226-7 
Imagination, 230-I 
Indignation, 384 
Indirect remembrance, 77 
Induction, 224 
Innate, 286 
Instinct, 104, 184 
Intoxication, 73 
Intuition, 284 
Invariable association, IOJ 
Itch, 47 

Jealousy, 386 
Job, 365 



Index. 



443 



Johnson, 82 

Kant, 116, 227, 308 

Keats, 132 

Kitto, 49. 150, 152, 162, 186 

Lamson's Life of L. Bridgman, 49, 

50, 145, 157, 206 
Ijingeweile, 329 
Language, Science of, 6, 158 
Leckie, 278 
Lefthandedness, 44 
Leibnitio-Wolfian School, 116 
Leibnitz, 185 
Lenau, 330 

Leonardo da Vinci, 173 
Levy, 43, 141, 145 
Leyden, 279 
Libations, 128 
Linnaeus, 34 
Literature, 238 

Locke, 185, 203, 215, 304, 305 
Logic, 112, 210 
Longet, 131 
Lotze, 78, 116, 149 
Lubbock, 201, 384 
LunaticuSy 8 

Magnetism, Animal, 271 

Mahaffy, 169 

Mansel, 308 

Mark's Gospel, 164 

Marlowe, 330 

Massieu, 186 

Maudsley, 134, 136, 141, 186, 253, 
254, 255 

M'Cosh, 303 

Meier, 116 

Melody, 159 

Memory, 99-100, 297-9 

Mendelssohn, Moses, 1 16 

Mesmer, 74, 271, 274 

Mill, J. S., 97, 212, 213, 215, 217, 
221, 222, 288, 291, 292, 293, 
294, 299, 300, 315, 317, 319 

Milton, 132, 137, 358 

Mind, I 

Mitchell, James, 50, 135, 138 

Mnemonics, 80 

Modesty, 367 

Monotony, 392 

Moonstruck, 8 

D 2 



Motive, 409 

Movement, breadth, form, and velo- 
city of, 22 
Movement, sensations of, 66 
Moyes, 151, 185 
Miiller, Maler, 330 
Miiller, Max, 197 
Music, 158-163, 238, 348-350 

Natural history of man, 6 

Naltirel, 1 1 

Nausea, 36 

Negative pleasures and pains, 333 

Neuralgia, 72 

Newton. 185 

Nightmare, 263 

Nominalism, 202-3 

Nomology, 210 

Nunneley, 168 

Object, 1-2 
Odylism, 271 
Overtones, 55 

Painting, 237-8 

Palate, 33 

Paresthesia, 253 

Passion, 312 

Pastimes, 329 

Pearson, 143 

Perez, 168 

Personal equation, 29 

Physiology, II 

Pitch, 53, 159 

Plato, 34, 115, 257, 315 

Plot-interest, 401, 403 

Positive pleasures and pains, 333 

Prescind, 191 

Preyer, 167, 3S}>. 35 2 

Psychology, origin of the name, i ; 

distinguished from Logic, 210 
Psychophysics, 24 8 
Puiseaux Du, 186 
Pulmonary sensations, 39, 67 
Pungent sensations, 36, 41, 47 
Pure cognitions, 285 

Quality of tones, 54, 159 
Quinctilian, 8l 

Race, 9 



444 



Index. 



Ramists, I 
Realism, 202 
'. 2S6 
Recollection, 91 
Refinement, 1 17 
Reichenbach, Yon, 74, 271 
Reid, 174, 267, 379 
Relativity, 88 

Remorse, 367 
Kenan, 1 q8 
Representation, 76 
Resemblance, 84, 393 

nent, $2 
Ridicule, 395 
Righthandedness, 44 
Romanes, 5 
Rousseau, 138 

r, 35 
Schelling, 236 
Schiller, 230 

323. 4'5 
isb School, 121, 286 

Sculpture, 236 

Self-evidence, 218 

. tense, sensibility, sensible, 
sm i/ive, define^ 1, 18 

Sentiment, |I2 

Sex, 10, 37S-380 

tespeare, 33, 80, 84, 137, 174, 
180, 260, 268, 320, 322, 324, 
325. 326, 330, 364, 413, 414 

Shame, 367 

Simonides, Si 

Socrates, 314, 315, 3S6 

Somnambulism, 269-281 

Spalding, 184 

Spectres, 248 

Spectrum, or after-image, 250 

Spectrum, or rainbow, 57 

Spencer, 12, 43, 201, 219, 230, 288, 
300, 308, 315, 317 

Spinoza, 254, 360 

Spirit of the age, 9 

St. Vitus' dance, 352 

Stewart, D., 50, 100, 135. 137, 141, 
149, 185, 267, 270, 403 

Stoicism, 314, 423 

Striking likeness, 93 

Study, 90-91 



Subject, 1-2 

Suggestibility, 93-100 

Suggestion, 76 
' Sll Kk rcs, ' v eness, 90-93 
Sully, 253, 295 
Sympathetic system, 19 
Sympathy, 372-5 

Taine, 253 

T.irantati, 352 

Tedium, 329 

Teiresias, 149. 

Temperament, n 

Temperature, sensations of, 48, 70 

Tennyson, 40, 86, 96, 132, 180, 330, 

34S, 361, 366, 368, 415 
Tetens, 1 16 
Theophrastus, 34 
Thomson, Dr. \V., 215 

Thomson, James, 377 

Thought-reading, 144 
Tickling, 47 

Timbre, 54 

Todd and Bowman, 145 

Tragedy, 321-5 

Transcendental, 284 

Trench, 382 

Truth, 228 

Tylor, 12, 201, 207, 384 

Unconscious cerebration, 107 
Un lerstanJin°* 286 
Uniform association, 101 

Vanity, 369 
Virgil, 86, 276, 387 
Vowels, 156 

Wardrope's patient, 168, 352 

Warner, 335 

Weber, 28, 42, 146 

Weird, 401 

Welsch, 158 

Wheatstone, 173 

Wholes, different kinds of, 232-3 

Wilson, Dr. D., 44 

Wilson, Dr. G., 344 

Wordsworth, 235, 236, 331, 363. 

413 
Wundt, 12, 60, 64, 78, 116, 162, 
168, 183, 253, 280, 316, 319, 
335 



Index. 



445 



Xenophon, 386 
Young, 60 



Zeitgeist, 9 
Zeno, 307 



I 




» ^ 



* .« 




A- 



0*" 



C~ .' 








*, * 






y ^ 













. & . o - • M *^j 

Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 



\ ^77, •** ^ °o *'*;t; PreservationTechnologies I 

( t . o, *^ V V ,•••, *^ A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION H 

> . ^^ • ^, ^ *V^d^ST* ^ 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive »' 









Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



C, %P 



y x"^V v-^v* v-W\ 










LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



ii i mi him M 111 mi 

013 310 095 7 i 



